How To Keep Tabs On Neighborhood Crime

Moving Decisions

Neighborhood Scout (neighborhoodscout.com) is a helpful site to see the safety rates of each city neighborhood. It will color code neighborhoods ranging which are the safest to the more dangerous. It will also provide you the annual numbers for number of crimes and crime rates per 1,000 residents. It’ll also categorize which crimes were related to violence and property. In addition, you’ll be provided numbers for how many of those violent crimes were murder, rape, robbery and assault and which property crimes were burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft. The site also provides a crime index for the city. It also provides other helpful information such as real estate, demographics, and schools. This can all help towards making that final moving decision. Most of the info provided is free but for more detailed reports, fees could apply.

AreaVibes (areavibes.com) is another site that could help determine the best place to move.

Crime Mapping

Need to know what crimes have been happening around your neighborhood recently? With CrimeMapping.com, just enter in your zip code to pull up a map pinpointing recent reported crimes. You’ll be surprised what pops up. You can check as recent as yesterday or as far back as six months. Once you’ve pulled up the map, little icons will appear where a crime has happened; each with their own color and design to indicate the specific crime. After that, you can click on the icon for more details such as time, date, reports, charts and incident number.

A similar site is LexisNexis Community Crime Map (communitycrimemap.com). This site can also show a density map of crimes in an area.

SpotCrime (spotcrime.com) is similar as well but it can deliver crime reports via social media (like Facebook and Twitter), email and also has an app you can use too.

Sexual Offender Map

You never know who or what lives right down the road from you and after using this site, you might be in for surprise. It’s always good to check this site (nsopw.gov) from time to time to see if any sexual offenders have recently moved close by. You’ll enter in your home’s address which will then pull up a map pinpointing where every local sexual offender resides. Each pinpoint will show a photo of the sex offender, which you can then click on for additional information.

Family Watchdog (familywatchdog.us) is another site you can use to locate registered sex offenders. You can also sign up for alerts when a sex offender moves into or away from your neighborhood.

Apps

Even if you don’t currently own a Ring Doorbell device, you can still use their Neighbors app (ring.com/neighbors) to be noticed of nearby crimes and theft. You can set it up to keep tabs on crimes within a 5 mile parameter.

Citizen (citizen.com) is another app you can use for real-time crime alerts. It uses a combination of technology and people (their smartphone location) to gather police and emergency dispatches in order to create alerts of nearby incidents. Live videos can even be uploaded. Another app feature is you can do a safety check with friends and family who happen to be nearby a crime or incident.

One site that has been rising in popularity is NextDoor (nextdoor.com). It’s a Facebook-like community site that builds a connection and the exchange of helpful information, goods, and services. Discussions within communities can range from anywhere between local gossip or business networking to keeping each other in the loop regarding crimes or suspicious activity.

Traditional

There are a few other ways to keep tabs on crime that don’t necessarily involve a computer.

You could also do things the old fashion way and tune into your local news station on T.V. to hear about recent crimes.

Word of Mouth – get to know your neighbors and community centers. It always helps to make friends and acquaintances with the people who reside nearby. That friendship may one day help protect your home and loved ones.