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Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

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Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#121

Post by SafemapTecnolgs »

joshghent wrote: post #103

Hey, remember me? We met randomly on a bus from Machu Picchu to Cusco a couple weeks ago! First "orange site" people I've met IRL lol. Great work on this - very slick UX and super quick. Be cool to expand it to support the UK or maybe develop some open standard for the way data can be reported. I'm sure businesses would pay for a consolidated data api.

Hey Josh! I was wondering whether you'd see this! Thanks for checking out the site - we'd love to expand to the UK and to add an API, thanks for the ideas.

It was great meeting you and chatting with you on that bus ride, hope you folks had a nice rest of your trip! And hope things are going well with LoginLlama and the other cloud storage related project you were talking about. Let me know if you ever need some beta testing done or something like that :)

Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#122

Post by xrd »

jjeaff wrote: post #102
xrd wrote: post #84

Can anyone speak to whether public statistics are accurate or not? Can anyone reassure me that these statistics are impossible to manipulate? I have a suspicion these statistics are only accurate and available when it is convenient for the people responsible for providing those statistics. Isn't it the case that the police are responsible for providing statistics to the public? During the pandemic and during the Geor…

I'm sure, like anything, there is incentive and opportunity to manipulate the numbers. but I don't think it would be easy to do without being found out. Police precincts do a lot of paperwork and behind any statistics, they are going to need the paperwork for individual cases to back up the numbers they submit. and if they are going to under report, they will need to destroy a lot of paperwork. but my intuition is th…

I just don't buy that it evens out.

For example, go here:

https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

Look at Florida: "The 2022 estimated Crime statistics for Florida are based on data received from 403 of 758 participating law enforcement agencies in the state that year."

That's 54% participation.

Look at Oregon: "The 2022 estimated Crime statistics for Oregon are based on data received from 215 of 236 participating law enforcement agencies in the state that year."

That's 91% participation.

Why don't police departments in Florida report? Why aren't Floridians demanding that reporting? Florida has incarceration rates double of Oregon by the way. Do Floridians not want to look at that uncomfortable fact?

Portland has been pilloried in the news the last few years as the example of liberalism gone wrong. But, IMHO, liberals are asking questions about law enforcement, and when you report fully, there are going to be examples of wrong doing. If you just don't report, then it is easy to hide.

A few days ago I had to collect the body of my cat from the Polk County Florida sheriff's department so I called to make sure I had the hours of operation right. I was on hold and told over and over "Crime is at a 50 year low!" It felt like propaganda, and it feels even more so like propaganda after seeing the above.

Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#123

Post by katzinsky »

burningChrome wrote: post #79
davedx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a tourist in SF recently I was interested in seeing the whole city, warts and all, and I did. I don't really understand why as a tourist you'd want to use this map for a short trip, unless you were going somewhere that's a literal war zone. Most cities just aren't statistically dangerous for a tourist unless you go out looking for trouble. You're much better off applying common sense than digging through digital m…

>> If I was looking for somewhere to live then it would be more interesting I think. When I was looking at places to live in South Carolina, Florida and places in the Northwest like Oregon and Idaho, it was interesting to see some of the crime maps and grades these sites gave for crime. In small coastal towns in Florida, they had small populations and were essentially tourist towns or inhabited by "snow birds" people…

Yes, data and statistics aren't a substitute for careful thought. You shouldn't throw them out but you definitely can't outsource your thinking to them either.

That's part of why online forums can be nice: a well moderated one can be great at pointing out blind spots in your thinking.

Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#125

Post by whimsicalism »

itsyaboi wrote: post #118
whimsicalism wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you’re really worried, don’t leave anything in your car and don’t lock it

I don't understand this advice. Are you suggesting that if you make it easier for thieves to break into your car, they are less likely to damage it?

yes and also do not leave anything in your car

Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#126

Post by kjkjadksj »

SafemapTecnolgs wrote: post #4
bufferoverflow wrote: post #2

You need to divide crime counts by population density. Otherwise you're just plotting population density.

Thanks for checking out the site and for the feedback. It's definitely something we're looking into. It's kind of an interesting question though because it somewhat varies by crime category. Take car break ins, for instance - this is more of a constant factor than a population density scalar because the number of parking spots is generally fixed on a per-block basis rather than scaling with population density. I thin…

Car break ins still depend on thievs that scale at some rate in the population. There’s finite time to break into a car.

Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#127

Post by kjkjadksj »

citrin_ru wrote: post #119
pchangr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with it. What is it that you think is misleading from this metric?

It's not wrong but what people usually want to know looking at crime stats map is a probability to become a victim if they visit a particular place of will more to live there. Crime count divided by number of residents only relevant for crime targeting residents like home burglaries. For other cases these number can be no-representative.

It should really be crime count by number of people out and about a day, but you will never have that number without some orwellian citizen surveillance program.

Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#128

Post by kjkjadksj »

autoexecbat wrote: post #59
whimsicalism wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s not surprising if you’ve ever lived in that area

It is somewhat surprising actually. Presumably if there's an actual hotspot that police would be ever-present in the area until it dilutes out

If police were ever present dealing with crimes, that’s actually how we would see hotspots. No police, none of that gets reported, and bart stops fade into the background.

Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#129

Post by kjkjadksj »

whimsicalism wrote: post #30
delichon wrote: post #28

Location based danger zone notifications would be helpful. "Warning: You are entering an area with a large number of reported muggings."

or a warning every time you get into your car "Warning: locations like these have a significantly higher fatality rate"

“Warning: its 8pm on a friday night and half the cars you see from here on out are drunk”

Re: Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

#130

Post by whimsicalism »

xrd wrote: post #122
jjeaff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure, like anything, there is incentive and opportunity to manipulate the numbers. but I don't think it would be easy to do without being found out. Police precincts do a lot of paperwork and behind any statistics, they are going to need the paperwork for individual cases to back up the numbers they submit. and if they are going to under report, they will need to destroy a lot of paperwork. but my intuition is th…

I just don't buy that it evens out. For example, go here: https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... Look at Florida: "The 2022 estimated Crime statistics for Florida are based on data received from 403 of 758 participating law enforcement agencies in the state that year." That's 54% participation. Look at Oregon: "The 2022 estimated Crime statistics for Oregon are based on data received from 215…

That might be a problem for state-level reporting but I'm not sure it really maps on to the city of San Francisco very well, tbf
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