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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)

#101

Post by nox101 »

rogers12 wrote: post #53
chatmasta wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of parking spots may be static, but the number of potential thieves scales with population density.

Does it really? Some classes of crime have been narrowed down to the same 50 individuals. You can't model car break-ins as everybody in the area rolling the dice on getting a taste for breaking glass and grabbing things.

yes, And this is why it's so frustrating the police don't just setup a few honeypots and catch those 50 people. Sooooooo many citizens would be helped, neighborhoods too, ...

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

#102

Post by jjeaff »

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 that while leadership may want to under report crime, cops will usually want to report as much as possible to prove that they are busy and necessary. so the balance likely gets us acceptably accurate numbers.

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

#103

Post by joshghent »

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.

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

#104

Post by bluescrn »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #14
bufferoverflow wrote: post #2

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

It's an important truth that walking a mile in a high population density area puts you at a higher crime risk than walking a mile in a medium or low population density area.

Not necessarily, as high population density generally means lots of police and lots of cameras (both security cameras and individuals with smartphones)

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

#105

Post by artembugara »

@SafemapTecnolgs, we (newscatcherapi.com, YC S22) are helping one of the largest NGOs build an interactive map of all reported corruption cases.

We collect over 1M national and hyper-local news in near real-time. Happy to help with collecting crime info from public news.

I'm happy to help for free; we'll also pay to develop & host information extraction using LLM!

Anyone, feel free to email me artem@newscatcherapi.com

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

#106

Post by ThisNameIsTaken »

This map makes me think of the New Inquiry's White Collar Crime map [1]. That project creates a strong image which for me disrupts the stereotype of what crime looks like and where we can find it.

I realize it has a very different aim than safemap, but I frequently use it as an example of how the selection of data sources and its visualization is crucial in communicating a particular story. This communication already starts with the name: calling a map of reported crime a 'safemap' implicitly suggests that red colored places are 'unsafe' and should be avoided. (The about popover literally states: "Learn which parts of San Francisco are safest and which parts are best to avoid.") Which, as the discussion here suggests might be more complicated than that.

[1]: https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com/

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

#107

Post by devvvvvvv »

ThisNameIsTaken wrote: post #106

This map makes me think of the New Inquiry's White Collar Crime map [1]. That project creates a strong image which for me disrupts the stereotype of what crime looks like and where we can find it. I realize it has a very different aim than safemap, but I frequently use it as an example of how the selection of data sources and its visualization is crucial in communicating a particular story. This communication already…

[flagged]

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

#108

Post by devvvvvvv »

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

[flagged]

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

#109

Post by pchangr »

citrin_ru wrote: post #100
bufferoverflow wrote: post #2

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

Divided by population one of highest crime rate areas in the UK is Westminster because this are attracts a lot of tourists (some are targeted by pickpockets) but not much people live there (denominator is small). A better metric will be crime count divided by man-hours spent in the area per day. Such data unlikely exists in open access but mobile operators should be able to estimate it based on base station logs.

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

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

#110

Post by [deleted] »

worstspotgain wrote: post #95
SafemapTecnolgs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Yeah unfortunately with cities like SF nowhere is truly "safe to park" but hopefully this helps people avoid the major hotspots!

It's actually quite safe to park in SF with two exceptions: - With anything visible that might contain a valuable. Any devices in the trunk should be in Airplane Mode. If you're a tourist, don't park by a tourist trap. - Any model with an oft-stolen catalytic converter, esp. Prius. SF itself has higher-than-average tourist density, so it's a burgling destination too. But it's possible to park for decades and never ha…

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