shotspotter maps
this week, we are welcoming a wonderful new cohort of graduate students to the department and our community. as a sociological criminologist, they sometimes ask me about the relative safety of various neighborhoods. usually they ask me such questions immediately after they have signed a long-term lease.i can offer personal impressions, but generally prefer to back them up with some fresh public-use data. official crime reports, however, can be subject to biases in reporting, enforcement, or processing. one alternative data source is the ShotSpotter technology now used to track gunshots in minneapolis. when sensors detect the sound of gunfire, the system triangulates the location of the gunshot. the police department then plots the data and puts their weekly shots fired maps online, along with precinct-specific maps tracking violent crime and other crime. given the potential biases in other sources of crime data, and the common-if-not-universal aversion to neighborhood gunfire, the new gunshot maps might offer a useful tool for apartment hunters. just remember to look before you lease.
links:
gunshot maps
crime maps
posted by christopher uggen @ 12:07 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
It might be interesting to do an overlay of the two maps to see how they're different. My uneducated guess would be that the shots fired maps accentuate crime in poor areas while ignoring crime in borderline areas like Uptown. The irony might be that crime in those areas is more likely to target bystanders--thefts or assaults unrelated to gang involvement. (Though certainly there's a risk here, too.)
We live in an area that looks bad on both these maps. Yet on a day to day basis, it's a relatively quiet place to live, relatively family friendly. While we're trying to move to student housing, several buyers have been scared off by both these maps--using them and media reports as their only source of info about our neighborhood. It's unfortunate that there's a deficit of other perspectives out there to counterbalance those views.
i hear you, jerry, and don't want to participate in demonizing particular neighborhoods. most places in minneapolis are crime-tolerable if not crime-free on a day-to-day basis. we're generally talking about small but potentially meaningful neighborhood differences in the cumulative probability of experiencing a relatively rare event, such as robbery. as you point out, many higher-crime neighborhoods have advantages that more than compensate for the somewhat elevated risks. that said, a high rate of gunshots sends a strong signal (to me, at least) about the level of formal and informal social controls in a neighborhood.
Just wondering about the crime maps, is this just reported crime? Just know from experience in Britain we have roughly 4 times the amount of recorded crime (though it varies between places and crime types).
yeah, leftwing. this is just reported crime. the gunshots, on the other hand, are picked up regardless of whether they are reported.
Chris
A federally funded org in my n'hood gave money for the shot spotter. I haven't taken a crim course in awhile, but wouldn't there be a difference in the maps because with the shot spotter, it records were shots were fired. Before this, we only had 911 to call and guess where the shots came from. Thus, the shots fired would not necessarily show on the crime maps because wouldn't the police actually have to find someone or make a report/arrest of some sort to show on the crime map?
Regardless, as a person who lives in a n'hood with a higher crime rate, I am glad to have teh shot spotter. When you hear gun shots from the inside of your house, it's not easy to detect what direction they were from. The best story I have was when I heard shots at 7am on New Years eve morning and when I called 911, they asked me what type of gun it was. My response was that I didn't know nor want to know the difference.
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