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.
Not Phoenix then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, and after reading about the police in Phoenix [slashdot.org], I almost wondered whether the heading was wrong.
OT - thanks for SimCity tag! (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who never played SimCity 4, it has a very strange bug where you would be notified about a "crime den" (implies high crime). However, when you went to the area being described, it was 99% of the time directly next to your police station.
Fortunately, it only lasted as a blip -- no increased crime, but still rather goofy.
Re:Criminal activity detection... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Statistics, statistics... (Score:4, Interesting)
I know maps like these are a problem in the UK for a different, systematic reason: Crimes detected at the police station after an arrest have their location marked as having taken place at that police station. eg if someone is arrested and taken back to the station, and when asked to empty their pockets drugs are discovered, then the location of that crime is in the police station building. Of course, this sort of thing will happen every day...
Makes the crime map a bit interesting...
Geoprocessing errors are common (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm an ArcGIS user who spends time coding geographically referenced data. On occasion, I process traffic crash locations. I don't work work for LA, and have no special knowledge of their process. But from my experience...
It is quite common to only get a 90 to 95 percent match to a location with a fully automated system. Spelling errors, wrong street prefixes (N instead of S), wrong zip codes, wrong cities, etc. are all things that will cause a bad location.
For the 5 to 10 percent that fall out, we have a routine that recodes based on a) county, then b) city, then c) street.
For the last 1 percent, the locations are physically located by hand.
As you might imagine, each step in the process takes effort and human touches to code correctly. If you don't have the time or the staff, a default location may be superior to 'location unknown'.
Re:Perhaps criminals are getting more brazen (Score:5, Interesting)
It is actually plausible that crime is higher by a PD. Consider that police operate effectively largely on the basis of force projection. Projecting force means they've got to spread out and, in part, create a perimeter within which they operate. The PD may have relied upon the force projection (ie the psychological influence the building would have) of the building, in part.
Also consider that a PD is more of a hub; police officers are coming and going to their respective patrol areas, going and coming off of shift. They are most likely not thinking "work" - ie, find criminals - at this time.
The PD may have been strategically placed where it was to dissuade crime in that specific area. I know that in the two largest cities in my state, the PDs are at, or near, the epicenter of low-income and crime (they're also just off the city centers). I lived near one of these PDs once, and it was indeed a higher crime area.
Baltimore (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in the Land of Pleasant Living (and also the setting for Homicide and The Wire), Baltimore's main Police HQ is set between President, Fayette, Gay, and Baltimore Streets. For those of you who aren't familiar with the area, the corner of Gay and Baltimore Street is one end of the city's infamous and long standing red light district, and Police HQ backs up to the heart of "The Block". One side of Baltimore Street are strip clubs and streetwalkers, along with the ever-present junkies, pickpockets, and pimps. The other side is the back of Police HQ, and parking is reserved for squad cars of Baltimore's Finest bringing in Baltimore's Worst at all hours of the day and night.
Re:Perhaps criminals are getting more brazen (Score:3, Interesting)
My parents used to cruise and street race in Southern California, and the preferred place to do it was about a block from the police station. The reason was simple: aside from shift changes (times for which were well known), there were no cops there. They were deployed far enough away that the racers only rarely saw a patrol car in the area, let alone on the racing street itself.
Re:Quick! (Score:5, Interesting)