CrimeView Community

Berkeley Police Offer Online Crime Database 

MICHAEL KAY / Daily Californian / UC Berkeley 28feb2006

Screen shot of CrimeView / Berkeley Police Department Mindfully.org note:          The City of Berkeley is short on cash and yet spends about $100,000 on a crime tracking system — essentially a toy — that will possibly benefit realtors in their efforts to sell highly over-priced houses. Meanwhile, in spite of those monetary shortfalls and police spending on toys, libraries are closed more often than not. The library's RFID "book tracking" system also cost even more — $650,000 initial payment, plus . . . lots of operating expense.          What bothers us more than the monetary costs of these technologies are the other costs: social, psychological, and so much more. We've become obsessed with keeping tabs on everything from books to cars; children and animals.          Everywhere one looks we are surveilled by closed circuit cameras. Where are we going with all this stuff? Does anyone think about the fact that it's getting to be like living in the movie "The Terminator"? The Governator of California must love it all.

A new Internet service that allows anyone with an Internet connection to track the locations of recent crimes in Berkeley was unveiled last week by the Berkeley Police Department.

The Community Crime View program, launched on Feb. 22 and available on the police department's Web site, provides a map-based database of offenses ranging from burglary to violent crime.

All reported crimes will be recorded into the program, and will be updated accordingly as incidents occur, said Berkeley police Officer Ed Galvan.

"We're hoping that we'll be within two- to three-day (updates) when it gets running 100 percent," he said.

Approximately 400 police departments in the United States and Canada use CrimeView Community, the software used in Berkeley's program, said Trip Albagdadi, director of marketing at The Omega Group, which designed the software.

San Francisco and Oakland also use crime-tracking programs, but in the overall Bay Area, few agencies use such software, Galvan said.

The program software had to go through significant customization and be integrated with the agency's current systems, along with staff training, which delayed the program's implementation for three years, Galvan said.

In total, the Berkeley program probably cost the city between $50,000 and $100,000, Albagdadi said.

Neither the Berkeley Police Department nor the city's finance department could provide a more specific figure.

The program contains far more features than the only other map of Berkeley crime on the Web, which is run by a New Hampshire-based group using Google Maps and data feeds to provide a similar but more basic service at www.incidentlog.com.

Users of the new system can now search for either a single crime type, such as automobile theft, or multiple types in one search.

Currently, the only crimes in the database are those that occurred starting at the end of November, but the service will eventually contain 180 days' worth of crime statistics at any given time, Galvan said.

Users can also search for crimes by location, which could make this service highly valued among real estate agents.

Remax Realtor Carol Serkes said it could prove a great boon to prospective home buyers.

"I'd love to have a resource like that because then I could refer people to it," she said.

source: http://www.dailycal.org/printable.php?id=21316 1mar2006