In an effort to improve safety and awareness among college students, an innovative new website called UCrime.com is combining Google Maps and police incident reports to help students track crime at UW-Madison and other campuses across the country.
UCrime.com began in early August as an offshoot of its sister website, Spotcrime.com. Spotcrime.com, which was started in January, maps city crime in the United States, Canada and recently expanded to several cities in England. UCrime.com CEO Colin Drane said Spotcrime.com's popularity has expanded to include nearly 2 million events being mapped.
After the success of Spotcrime.com, Drane said the need for campus crime information to be available on the Internet as well became apparent. UCrime.com partners with Google Map technology to generate interactive maps that create visual aids for crime statistics.
After selecting a university map, a side key allows the viewer to narrow the map to a variety of different crimes such as arson, assault, burglary, robbery, shooting, theft, vandalism and other arrests.
Under the Clery Act, universities are required by federal law to provide crime reports to the entire campus community, which is how the website receives the bulk of its information. UCrime.com visitors also have the opportunity to interact by commenting on local crimes as well as providing tips and other information.
Additionally, Drane said UCrime.com is set to provide free, easy-to-read crime maps and automated alerts through e-mail, Google and even Facebook"" to registered users on the site.
The site became available to UW-Madison in the second phase of university map additions and currently maps the crime statistics at over 200 universities.
In Madison, UCrime.com is already tracking a number of different crimes. Madison Police Department public information officer Joel DeSpain said UCrime.com visitors might notice a standout offense when mapping downtown crime statistics on the site.
""One troubling trend we have recently seen in the downtown area are robberies,"" DeSpain said.
At a news conference Friday, MPD South District Captain Jim Wheeler said many of the recent violent robberies target UW-Madison students, faculty and staff. Drane hopes UCrime.com will aid in promoting safety on the UW-Madison campus by appealing to students through technology.
""[The website] is another tool, another way to present information,"" Drane said. ""It is our objective to display crime data in a different format in order to increase awareness and promote safety.""
