Jeff Severns Guntzel is doing some interesting work with the murder data in the City of Minneapolis. After aggregating much of the publicly available data surrounding each murder and putting it into a Google Fusion Table, it’s relatively easy to get a feel for what’s happening when, where, with what, and to whom. For example, [...]
I parked at a meter in downtown Urbana, IL, stopped into an awesome BBQ place for lunch, then walked back out to fill the meter. The meter’s cost? 25 cents per hour. I threw in a 2nd quarter just for fun. How long can it take to have lunch? Well, it turns out that in [...]
Mike Masnick has a piece up on Techdirt talking about the ridiculousness of the 17 state attorney generals who are attempting to shut down Craiglist’s Adult Services category. Masnick’s take on this is that law enforcement officials that are interested in actually preventing crimes should use Craigslist to their advantage rather than push Craigslist’s advertisers [...]
MPR has been doing a great job maintaining a Google Map of Minneapolis’ 2010 homicides. Here’s the map, as they present it on their site: View 2010 Mpls. Homicides in a larger map Each marker links to a story they’ve done related to that homicide. This is an excellent way to help people access archived [...]
Ever seen a white collar crime map? No? Me neither. As I see it, Ponziconomy fraudsters manage to steal way more money than petty thieves combines. Big time thievin’. Why don’t their neighborhoods get the credit they deserve for being home to big time criminals? So I figured I’d kick it off here. So far, [...]
The MPD sent out this look at year over year crime statistics for the neighborhoods making up Sector 2. That’s basically the section of Minneapolis just Southwest of the corner of Lake & Hiawatha. On nearly all counts, things seem to have improved over the past year: While this is cool information, the City of [...]
Here’s a snippet from the 3rd Precinct MPD Sector 4 Community Bulletin for the past week. Sector 4 of the 3rd Precinct covers the following neighborhoods: Cooper, Hiawatha, Howe, Longfellow, Seward. I wonder if this is a case of being lulled into a false sense of security? The crime levels in this part of town [...]
It’s great to see a drop in homicides, but it would also be great to see the city illustrate the drop using year over year comparisons rather than comparing 1/2 of 2009 vs. the full year of previous years. To spit-shine the numbers even further, the accompanying text states: In 2007, within the first 110 [...]
The City of Minneapolis has a new online form where you can drop gold stars on cops. Cool idea. The site also has forms where you can drop tips about cops who get blowjobs from hookers rather than arrest or help them. And one for complaints about officers pulling people over for DWBs (driving while [...]
Giving a crap doesn’t take much time. Small efforts really do add up. For example, Johnny Northside called in some deadbeat landlords from his cell while out for a caffeine pickup: Of course, making 311 calls wasn’t the PURPOSE of my walk. In fact, I was just going to the grocery store. But I don’t [...]
