SHEBOYGAN, WI (WHBL) - For those who have ever wondered what crimes take place near where they live, and how often crimes happen, those living in Sheboygan now have the opportunity to find out by going online or on their smart device.
Two weeks ago the Sheboygan Police Department began offering raw data into crime statistics through the Raids Online service. Captain Steve Cobb says the service is a version of the same program that the department uses internally for crime analysis, Bair Analytics. “And it’s a very simple way for us to post event information out so people can understand what’s going on in and around their neighborhoods.”
The way to access the service is to go to the Sheboygan Police Department's website and access their "SPD Crime Map" on their main page. The service also has a mobile app available, with access to all the communities that use it in the United States.
Once there, Cobb says people will see a wide array of crimes that have occurred over the past month. “Right now we’ve defined a number of events that go over and report on Raids Online. In the Raids Online module it has an events tab, and it’s going to explain what those different crimes are. Now, all of the UCR crimes, the FBI reportable crimes that we send in to our UCR reports, obviously those are in there - burglaries, assaults, robberies.”
There are other crimes that may have different meanings, but with how the software works they get lumped into one broad category. Those include vandalism and OWIs. The way to distinguish between them is to click on an icon on the map and read the snapshot regarding the incident. Cobb says it will include basic information. “And it’s going to involve an incident number, a description of the crime, basically a description of the type of location code that we have assigned to it.”
For those wondering if the program will give out exact locations, Cobb says they have set it up so that this does not happen. “We’ve set the software up so we’re not identifying the exact addresses, it will identify the hundred block. And then certain crimes, some of the more sensitive crimes, have even been offset even greater. So a sex crime, it may display at a certain point but that’s not exactly where the (crime) happened. It has a random offset so we don’t inadvertently identify victims.”
Reaction has been slow since posting the information online, but that does not surprise Cobb. “I think people are still looking at it and trying to evaluate what they want to look at, what conclusions they are going to draw from it. Like I say its raw data, and there’s a lot of different parameters that people can set within the software to see the data that they want to see. But I think importantly what it shows us is crime is not a systemic event. It’s really patternized and its concentrated in certain areas, and when we talk about our ability to police when and where crime occurs, it’s tools like this that help us make that distinction.”