24 February 2012

New crime maps from ACT Policing

| johnboy
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crime maps

Simon Corbell has announced a new crime map:

Mr Corbell launched ACT Policing’s latest web tool today at the ActewAGL Royal Canberra Show and said it was a great way to provide the community crime statistics by suburb, draw comparisons between suburbs and view crime trends over the past five years in a quick, easy and accurate way.

“It is important for the community to have access to accurate data on crime trends in a user-friendly format, and these maps make it easier to for people to understand crime trends in their area,” Mr Corbell said.

“Property crime is an area of criminality that is a concern to Canberrans, and the latest report card on policing services in the Territory shows a significant downward trend.

“Over the 2010-11 financial year, motor vehicle theft is down 37 per cent, burglary down 32 per cent and robbery down 22 percent.

“This is evidence that having a single source of data can allay misconceptions and fears about crime in our community.”

The maps are up on the ACT Policing website

Yikes! look at Belconnen go for Traffic infringements!

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breda said :

Another first for ACT Policing’s intrepid PR team, most of whom must have left school at age 13 after repeating Year 5 several times. Mis-spelling the name of the Minister’s home suburb is a spectacular own goal, even for them.

See the post on the Narrabundah unit fire for an unintentionally hilarious howler, interspersed with the usual sub literate sludge. Truly, someone there must have not just the colour photos, but the video and stereo soundtrack safely cached to still be in that job.

I’m pretty sure it would be a breach of somebody’s Human Rights if you were to point out that they are an incompetent halfwit unsuited to the position they are occupying.

#16
yellowsnow9:22 pm, 24 Feb 12

when i saw a story about this on the ABC news, they showed Simon Corbell at the Canberra show with coppers standing next to a map like the one above – except instead of ‘Weston Creek’ the map had ‘Western Creek’!

Corbell (a resident of WC) looked fairly displeased to say the least! How such a major spelling error could have been allowed to happen is disturbing given the police hierarchies involved (the maps must have gone through a v complex approval process before release).
—————————————————————————
Another first for ACT Policing’s intrepid PR team, most of whom must have left school at age 13 after repeating Year 5 several times. Mis-spelling the name of the Minister’s home suburb is a spectacular own goal, even for them.

See the post on the Narrabundah unit fire for an unintentionally hilarious howler, interspersed with the usual sub literate sludge. Truly, someone there must have not just the colour photos, but the video and stereo soundtrack safely cached to still be in that job.

Samuel Gordon-Stewart9:43 pm 24 Feb 12

Even if I select the final quarter of last year, the text under the map informs me that the source of the data is:
ACT Policing PROMIS and Autocite as of 4 July 2011

Now, as much as I have big problems with systems which predict crimes, if the Police have such systems, shouldn’t they be attending the crimes scenes before people turn up to commit the crimes?

when i saw a story about this on the ABC news, they showed Simon Corbell at the Canberra show with coppers standing next to a map like the one above – except instead of ‘Weston Creek’ the map had ‘Western Creek’!

Corbell (a resident of WC) looked fairly displeased to say the least! How such a major spelling error could have been allowed to happen is disturbing given the police hierarchies involved (the maps must have gone through a v complex approval process before release).

Interesting to note that it didn’t take long for the ACT Policing website to be amended to. Corbell must have had a very terse word to someone that’s for sure.

To use this kind of information, you need to know the suburb’s background. Say for example there are a lot of assaults in Mitchell – well, it has a juvenile detention centre, so it would be no surprise. As a mainly industrial suburb, it has a very small residential population, making rates per head of population astronomically high.

Drug seizures in Hume? Try the car park at the prison.

Car thefts from Pialligo? Well, we leave cars parked there for weeks at the airport (though actually, the airport seems to be excluded from the map), and almost no-one lives there.

Assaults in Civic? Well, it’s full of intoxicated people after dark, and again few people live there so the rates per population are really high.

Single incidents can also have a big effect – vehicle-related deaths in Fyshwick – MULLY!

Statistics aren’t facts – they need interpretation.

For crimes of low frequency, being able to aggregate quarters to years or multiple years would be good, but I coudn’t work out how to do that.

Here endeth the patronising lesson.

IP

drfelonious said :

I missed the homicide in Holder that is listed as having occurred in 2011? No reference to it in a search of Google or even on this site.

if you look at the ACT policing definition of homicide on the mapping tool, you’ll see homicide includes murder, manslaughter and attempted murder. There was an axe wielding man around in Holder last year that got shot in the leg by police (and survived). Maybe he (or the person he was threatening to axe, presumably his partner) was the one ‘homicide’ statistic. I’m vaguely aware of another ‘incident’ in the suburb, but ultimately it was determined there were no ‘suspicious circumstances involved’ (police lingo for suicide)

Wow, Acton trumps most suburbs i plugged in. I suspect that has something to do with it’s distance from the city.

Wow, an entire press-release in Gill Sans, that’s bold!

Its no wonder not many people live in Hume or Mitchell

The rates per 1000 population are:
Incident type Mitchell Hume
Homicide 0.00 0.00
Assault 2800.00 3500.00
Sexual assault 200.00 500.00
Offences against a person 0.00 0.00
Burglary 4400.00 6250.00
Robbery 200.00 0.00
Theft (excluding Motor Vehicles) 10200.00 11750.00
Motor vehicle theft 1800.00 1500.00
Property damage 7200.00 9000.00
Other offences 17200.00 23000.00
Traffic Infringement Notices 78000.00 131000.00
Road fatality 0.00 0.00
Road collision with injury 800.00 1250.00

Surely Rates per Area would be more appropriate

Very interesting map. I may have missed it but Oaks Estate and Duntroon appear to be missing.

So my brief analysis suggests Forest, Chapman/Duffy, Macquarie and Macarthur are, relative to population, the lowest crime areas. But with O’Malley/Isaacs taking first prize

I missed the homicide in Holder that is listed as having occurred in 2011? No reference to it in a search of Google or even on this site.

shadow boxer3:22 pm 24 Feb 12

If you untick TIN’s to take the speed cameras out of the mix it reads much better.

Cool map though…

JonahBologna said :

As a spatial analyst, these maps are not very good. Crime is not the sort of phenomena that is suited to mapping at the suburb level.

I agree, I wish they were at street or block level.

That would be cool.

the effect on real estate prices on Catchpole street macquarie would be dramatic!

JonahBologna said :

As a spatial analyst, these maps are not very good. Crime is not the sort of phenomena that is suited to mapping at the suburb level.

Example 1:
If I steal a car at the ABC flats (Braddon), then smash it into another car in Civic, and then torch it in Deakin which suburb gets the stats?

Example 2:
There aren’t a lot of people that have addresses in Civic, so you can assume that the crimes aren’t committed by people that live there. Wouldn’t you like to know where the criminals live?

Example 1: Not sure how they’re doing their stats, but I’d imagine Braddon would get the SMV stat, Civic would get the prang stat, and Deakin would get the recovered SMV/arson stat.

Example 2: Personally, I care more about where the crooks are working than where they’re living.

JonahBologna said :

As a spatial analyst, these maps are not very good. Crime is not the sort of phenomena that is suited to mapping at the suburb level.

Example 1:
If I steal a car at the ABC flats (Braddon), then smash it into another car in Civic, and then torch it in Deakin which suburb gets the stats?

Example 2:
There aren’t a lot of people that have addresses in Civic, so you can assume that the crimes aren’t committed by people that live there. Wouldn’t you like to know where the criminals live?

Answer 1
A theft logged in Braddon, dangerous driving (or similar) logged in Civic and an arson loged in Deakin.

Three different crimes in three different locations.

The second one is harder to overcome.

JonahBologna2:28 pm 24 Feb 12

As a spatial analyst, these maps are not very good. Crime is not the sort of phenomena that is suited to mapping at the suburb level.

Example 1:
If I steal a car at the ABC flats (Braddon), then smash it into another car in Civic, and then torch it in Deakin which suburb gets the stats?

Example 2:
There aren’t a lot of people that have addresses in Civic, so you can assume that the crimes aren’t committed by people that live there. Wouldn’t you like to know where the criminals live?

WOW

Charnwood V Nicholls

Can’t be true

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