Jan 12, 2008 8:19 am US/Eastern
Neighborhood Crime Rates With A Click Of A Mouse?
HOLLYWOOD (CBS4) ―
The City of Hollywood is placing the safety of their residents in the palm of their hands, literally. With just a click of their mouse, residents and citizens can now research neighborhood crime rates with online tool CrimeView Community.
The program located on the Hollywood Police Department's website allows current residents and future residents the chance to do their own investigating, by checking on their neighborhoods crime activity.
Residents are able to check their neighborhoods crime, the frequency of the crime and when and where the crime took place.
"The largest problem seems to be vandalism," Motel owner Perry Pustam said.
Pustam logged on to "CrimeView" to check out the crime around him just by putting in his address.
"In this case, this is a burglary of a vehicle in the 1700 block of Cleveland Street," he pointed out.
What internet users will see are icons representing various types of crimes happening in the searched area.
For example, red men represent burglaries, and blue v's represent vandalism.
Since Pustam owns a motel and lives in Hollywood, he likes seeing first hand what's going on around him.
"If I'm looking at this on a weekly basis or monthly basis, I will see what's happening in my area, what to look out for," he said.
Walter Philbrick is a security expert and he says if you know what's going on nearby, you have more power to chase the bad guys away.
"They'll work that area for a while until it gets hot, then they'll move because police now are in the area, they're tracking it, extra patrols in the area," Philbrick said.
The program can also predict where accidents are likely to happen. It showed 120 accidents at the corner of Sheridan and 441 in the past year. And with the click of the mouse, police can predict when they'll see the most trouble there and plan for it.
They can do the same thing with crime.
"It allows us to know what time during the week they're occurring, what time of the day they're occurring," said Hollywood Police Captain Joe Healy.
Even if you don't live in Hollywood, you can get a lot of this information about crime happening in your own neighborhood.
Just click on
Hollywood,
Miami-Dade,
Fort Lauderdale, or
Crime Watch USA to start investigating the crime in your area.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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