Flawed Map Says L.A.'s Crime Highest Next to Police HQ 123
CNET briefly describes how a poorly chosen default behavior has led to an online crime map of Los Angeles (on a site designed at a cost of $362,000) that shows that "a location just a block from the department's new headquarters is the most crime-ridden place in the city." I wonder how often this sort of error would completely skew things like real-estate maps that attempt to show whether houses in a certain neighborhood are worth more than those in the one next door.
Do you live in LA? (Score:4, Informative)
That's not a mistake. In LA, most of the HQ's *are* in high crime areas.
Downtown, Van Nuys, etc...
Re:Perhaps criminals are getting more brazen (Score:3, Informative)
More seriously, they should probably have had the program throw an error in case they could not find a certain location rather than putting the crime report at an arbitrary location. That would have caused the problem to be discovered earlier.
There's pros and cons... What if you know the police district and want to give corrent district values, even there's no specific address? If not providing an address makes the crime "go away", there could be a tendency to have more "unlocalized" crime. Probably it was a case of conflicting requirements that said all crime was to represented and all crime had a location that nobody really thought through.
I think your suggestion is unrealistic because sometimes there's no one good address. If you caught a speeder that you chased for three city blocks, was it the address you first observed the crime? Where he rammed that car in the chase? Where the chase ended? What if that's an intersection with no real address? Closest address? GPS coordinates? It's not relevant to the case what building was closests, and it'd be a waste of time coming up with rules just because everything must have an address. Still it would be relevant to know the general area for other statistics.
Re:OT - thanks for SimCity tag! (Score:3, Informative)
Or the mysterious corner of the airport...
Of course, it's common knowledge that every murderer, rapist, tagger, and druggie goes to the corner of the local airport to commit their crimes.
Clearly it's the corner of the Executive Lounge. You just think it lacks realism.
Re:Criminal activity detection... (Score:2, Informative)
It's not surprising that these crime maps would show this result - the places that police officers are most likely to be, are the places where the most crime is "found".
Are you implying police officers commit the most crimes?
No joke, there are places [wikipedia.org] where this is believable.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that, in places without cops, no crime gets reported. No cops = no arrests, ergo no crime information about the area.
Re:Quick! (Score:3, Informative)
No Doubt (Score:3, Informative)
Re:$362,000 (Score:3, Informative)
It has to meet strict security guidelines and undergo expensive independent security audits before it's approved for use?
Re:OT - thanks for SimCity tag! (Score:1, Informative)
#061
Re:Perhaps criminals are getting more brazen (Score:4, Informative)
Choropleths are dangerous because most amateurs don't plot density.
The eye naturally integrates over an area of uniform color, and so
you must not create maps of raw magnitude if the mapped regions
vary (significantly) in size. Otherwise, a small area of high-crime
will appear less significant than a large area of moderate crime.
Don't get me started (Score:3, Informative)
Amongst my several different experiences with the incompetence and criminality that is the LAPD, they were perusing my belongings one day whilst I was locked in the back of one of their cars. They got pretty excited about a crate of Thompson smg magazines &c. that I had. Once they determined that I hadn't committed any crimes they could prove and went away, imagine my surprise to discover that one box of .357 and two boxes of .45 caliber Black Talon ammunition had found a new, better qualified, owner. When the shmoogs set fire to the shopping centers and called it an "uprising", I didn't condone it, but I understood what they were talking about.