Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Crime: What A Difference A River Makes



Above is a map comparing crime in the last 30 days in Arlington and DC. I live at the left most red "bubble". You can see that there have been over 500 crimes in DC during this time, while there has been virtually none in Arlington. What a difference the Potomac makes!

This map was made using CrimeReports which allows you to check out recent crimes in any area that data is available. For the record, the map above starts to look pretty sparse when I filter out crimes against property and look only at crimes against persons. In that case, the number of crimes drops to 56 -- or about an average of two in this whole region per day. Throwing in property crimes, the number grows ten-fold.

Also for the record, I did have my truck broken into once since moving to Arlington. I made the mistake of leaving a bag of trash in my cab that looked like it might have had something valuable inside. The thief made the mistake of getting caught by the police...

Update: A friend writes: "No doubt that there is much more crime in DC than Arlington, but this map is a bit misleading. Crime does happen in Arlington! Arlington County police just doesn't share that data with that particular website. For info on Arlington crimes, check out crime reports on the Arlington County website." I guess Arlington isn't just a bed roses after all?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

also, what a difference "reporting crime" makes either by those who are victims or the police who register the crimes.