Police Reports. We are pleased to post a link to a new website. It is a private effort to allow us citizens to easily look up Bellingham police reports. It takes information from police reports on the city's website and presents it in a useable manner.
You can choose a type of arrest, dates, or see a plot on a map of Bellingham. You can check for types of crime in your neighborhood. You can see "Vehicle Prowl" for the month of February and see which parts of Bellingham have them and which do not.
The site also creates graphs to order with different dates and criteria, and even shows some very interesting pie charts of which days of the week are best and worst for different types of crime. You can almost guess at some.
Created by John Meloy, a local computer programer, he has said that it will be enhanced further if people find it useful. Right now, it requires a manual download of reports each week. Soon, it will automatically download the reports each day.
The link is at www.dangerserver.com and a permanent link is set in the right column for future use.
We simply believe citizens should have access to information on our community. And it should be made easy for them to get. This is a tool for looking at what concerns you may have in your neighborhood. We need information before we can act to address concerns.
Comments by Readers
Riley Sweeney
Mar 19, 2012I love this tool. It is fantastic, thank you John, and thank you John for sharing it with us.
Mike Rostron
Mar 20, 2012Thank you John! A tool for citizens that the city should have created long ago. In a democratic society information access is of the utmost importance.
Ryan M. Ferris
Mar 20, 2012It’s a great effort to give those those daily statistics a meaningful UI. This website: http://oakland.crimespotting.org has a similar idea but implements functionality that allows you to see crime patterns through neighborhoods, which I think is very useful to citizens and law enforcement. Police work has so many facets. For example, if you chart a graph of the categories for ‘Domestic Disputes’, ‘Juvenile Problem’, ‘Welfare Check’,‘Trouble with a Person’ you get an idea of the number of ‘Social Services’ police agencies are called upon to provide on a daily basis. How those statistics should influence social policy is an important discussion.
John Meloy
Mar 21, 2012Thanks everyone! This project is just in its infancy and I’ll be expanding on its capabilities over time. I have seen that crime spotting site before. I got the idea for all this from seeing that site while watching the Joy of Stats—an awesome documentary piece on BBC featuring Hans Rosling. If you get a chance, make sure to watch it on YouTube. It’s really great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en2ix9f8ceM
Rob Stratton
Mar 21, 2012Now if they would only be forthright with the crimes committed by the police. How many 1st, 4th, or 5th amendment violations have occurred? How many times have they used “pretext” stops? How many times have they coerced/bribed people into with threats or promises?
I have been a victim of police crime and know many others. My incident here in Bellingham was even mentioned in an online magazine.