Welcome to Crime Watch New Orleans

11 Sep 2008 by Rob Schafer

I am pleased to announce the launch of Crime Watch New Orleans, a website devoted to helping the citizens of New Orleans track criminal activity in the city. It is hoped that this site will become a useful resource for everyone interested in tracking the occurrence of crime near their homes, businesses and throughout the city.

Site design and implementation actually began early last year after rising crime rates prompted a citizen march on City Hall; at this point, it was clear that crime was of paramount concern to the citizenry and that people needed information about what was happening around them. Design and implementation proceeded quickly enough but the site was fettered by the lack of a reliable source of crime data; ultimately, it was decided that publishing incomplete and/or inaccurate data would be unhelpful and work on the site was suspended in mid-2007.

However, in May of 2008 the New Orleans Police Department agreed to provide incident reports to The Times-Picayune, the city’s daily newspaper, which has been publishing them ever since. These incident reports are used by Crime Watch New Orleans to populate the site’s crime maps, which are updated as new incident reports become available.

The site is a work-in-progress; new features are planned and will be announced on this blog as they are completed. Bugs in existing features will be fixed as quickly as possible. Please feel free to contact me to report any issues encountered while using this site. Suggestions for new features are welcome as well!