I believe the more people use this, the better attended our beat meetings will be because people will want to talk about what's going on. The Web site grew from an internal program available only to police, who used it for crime analysis. Now the public can work on a similar system. Though that might be true, Chicago isn't the first city to make crime information available on the Internet. The U.S. Justice Department has been encouraging the development of such systems for both police and citizen use.
Users also can search for information on specific crimes.
The Red Bluff, Calif., Police Department has a site with monthly crime-analysis maps. Users can specify a crime, such as burglary or drunken driving, and view a map of the city showing where those offenses occurred. The Houston Police Department offers citizens access to monthly crime statistics on its Web site. The tables include the type of crime, the location and the date and time it occurred. This openness represents a shift in police departments, which traditionally have kept information to themselves.