Civic News

DC has a new tool to search and map crime data

It's called Crime Cards. The Office of the Chief Technology Officer and Metropolitan Police Department used Mapbox to build it.

Search D.C. Crime Cards with a sentence. (Screenshot via D.C. government)

The District’s crime map got a refresh.

On Friday, D.C. government rolled out Crime Cards. It’s an update to the District’s decade-old crime mapping tool, providing capabilities to search for specific kinds of crimes and visualizations of crime “hotspots,” among other data.

At a news conference, Mayor Muriel Bowser demoed the new tool with leaders from the Metropolitan Police Department, Office of the Chief Technology Officer and D.C.–based Mapbox who worked on the effort. Chief of Police Peter Newsham said the modernization came as a result of input from police and government officials, as well as feedback during a hackathon last year.

“Collectively we saw that this design was an opportunity to focus on the transparency and usability of this application,” Newsham said.

Officials said the new version of the tool is designed to be mobile-friendly, which wasn’t true of the prior iteration. It also has a format that makes it easier to look at multiple visualizations at once, and was built using open source technology.

Search Crime Cards

Multiple categories of data can also be queried at once using a single sentence. One example uses the sentence, “I want to explore all crimes over the past two years citywide on a heat map.” The terms “all,” “crimes, “two years,” “citywide” and “heat map” each generate different maps based on types of crimes, date, location and type of map (neighborhood, ward, etc.). On a mobile device, users can specify a distance from their location.

“You can make 174,000 different queries in one English sentence,” said Barney Krucoff, the District’s interim CTO. Searchable data goes back to 2009 and is updated daily.

Within OCTO, Krucoff said Julie Kanzler was lead developer handling design and coding along with a team within the office.

The platform is built using software created by Mapbox, which recently moved to a new office. According to Mapbox Head of Community Mikel Maron, the team at OCTO took advantage of new features being introduced by the company.

“Mapbox is very proud to be powering this new app and helping build a safer and stronger DC – where Mapbox was founded and where we will be continuing to grow our presence,” said COO and President Roy Ng.

Companies: Washington Metropolitan Police Department / Mapbox / District of Columbia

Before you go...

Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.

3 ways to support our work:
  • Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
  • Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
  • Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
The journalism fund Preferred partners Our services
Engagement

Join our growing Slack community

Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!

Trending

14 tech community events to be thankful for in November

How 4 orgs give back to their local tech community

After the election, go to Thanksgiving dinner anyway

Hispanic tech workers more than double representation in key US cities

Technically Media