CrimeReports.com

We learned about a new website, CrimeReports.com, that aggregates crime reports from across the country and allows you to search for them in any locality. The idea is that local law enforcement agencies feed their data (likely also available on their own websites) to this site, allowing for open-source national sharing of crime data.

Although the site is still getting some agencies on board -- New York City, for example, has no crime data, although it is available on the NYPD website -- it seems like a great way to build knowledge, bring criminal justice agencies on board with Web 2.0 technologies, and create open-source sharing about crime patterns in places across the U.S.

If you click on the "Analytics" tab at the upper right, you'll be able to see exactly which localities provide data and even generate charts for various crime entities. The displays are dynamic so that you can break down "theft," for example, into more precise categories of crime. This is definitely a win for community-based organizations in need of crime data for grant-writing purposes as well.