The Danville Police Department announced today that it has partnered with LexisNexis Risk Solutions to provide a new crime map that will allow the public to stay informed about crime in their neighborhood.
To find the map, go to www.communitycrimemap.com and then type “Danville, Virginia” in the address bar on the left rail of the page or click on “VA – Danville” in the drop-down menu of cities.
“By viewing the site’s map, citizens can stay informed about local crime events that occurred as recently as one day ago,” Police Maj. Chris Wiles said Wednesday. “They can sign up for neighborhood watch reports that automatically email a breakdown of recent crime activity, and they can submit an anonymous tip about a crime directly to the Police Department.”
The map automatically syncs with the Police Department’s records system to keep crime information updated online and in the mobile app, so citizens can view crime activity information whether they access it from a desktop computer or mobile device.
Scott Longerbeam, GIS coordinator for the City’s Information Technology Department, said the LexisNexis Community Crime Map provides distinct advantages to the custom-built mapping site that the City released three years ago.
“The analytics tab provides a way to visualize the data in a way we haven’t had available to us in the past,” Longerbeam said. “The LexisNexis Community Crime Map also enables us to have a consistent platform to display our crime data, and it allows us to join many other localities across the country in hosting our information on a common website.”
How it works: Community Crime Map organizes and locates the crime data and then displays all of the incidents on a map, grid and analytics dashboard. Each crime event includes basic information about the incident: type of crime, location type, block-level address (approximation in order to protect victim privacy), and date and time. This data can also be viewed in graphs that show crimes organized by day of the week or time of day.
The Police Department and the Information Technology Department have produced a tutorial that is available on the City’s YouTube channel — DanvilleVAGov.
While not every neighboring locality in Danville’s vicinity currently participates in the Community Crime Map, there are several other municipalities across Virginia and other states that do provide crime data, which can also be viewed on the map for those interested in regional trends.
About LexisNexis Risk Solutions:
LexisNexis Risk Solutions (www.lexisnexis.com/risk) is a leader in providing essential information that helps customers across all industries and government predict, assess and manage risk. Combining leading technology, unique data and advanced scoring analytics, it provides products and services that address evolving client needs in the risk sector while upholding the highest standards of security and privacy.
Typically, agencies can spend thousands of dollars annually through other crime-mapping providers. LexisNexis Risk Solutions offers Community Crime Map and the Community Crime Map Mobile app as a free service to any law enforcement agency that wishes to participate. Community Crime Map is ad-free and LexisNexis Risk Solutions does not sell the data to third party vendors, so the agency remains in complete control over their data.