Niagarans can track neighbourhood crime

Niagara Regional Police have a new tool that lets residents know what’s happening in their neighbourhoods when it comes to break- ins, property theft and assaults.

And that tool — NRPS Crime Reports — is now live on the police website.

“This serves as a great crime prevention tool for us,” police Chief Bryan MacCulloch said at Thursday’s police board meeting.

MacCulloch said it can be used to prompt people in the community to have discussions with neighbours and be aware of what’s occurring in their area.

“I see a lot of positives,” he said. In a presentation to the board, Const. Kevin McGrath said Crime Reports went live Thursday. It’s an interactive crime mapping tool approved in 2016 that allows the public to have access to various reports.

“It’s a virtual conversation with the community. People can browse occurrences, times and locations,” he said. “People can see recent crime activity and be more vigilant.”

The data on the site — its sorted by no less than 28 categories — is usually delayed by two or three days as it is entered into the system and will accumulate over the years so people can look back at various trends.

“It’s not real- time data.”

Police said the delay is due to the technical data management and to protect the integrity of ongoing police investigations, investigative techniques and/ or identity of victims and witnesses.

McGrath said information such as the locations of sex offenders will not be published either.

Sgt. Tara Henderson said people can set up any time frame — a week, month, year or years — to look at data.

Privacy concerns were taken into consideration when coming up with the system.

Addresses of calls will not be published. Instead, police will use the nearest cross street or intersection and will add zeroes to addresses or use a block addressing system.

Henderson said in a rural area with few homes there is a risk a location could be identified and that police have fine- tuned the system the best they can.

Henderson said the police service did not have the capability to make an app for the system. Third- party software is being used to publish the data online.

“We can look at it in the future,” she said.

Board chair Bob Gale suggested the system will benefit real estate agents and the tourism industry. He said both could use it to show how safe or unsafe an area is.

“How does the public benefit from this?” he asked.

McGrath, a former member of the police service IT team, said he has used it to check out things happening in his own neighbourhood and other areas of interest to him.

“It’s a great engagement tool for me, to see the volume of work being done by the police service,” he said. The site can be found at www.niagarapolice.ca/ en/ community/ crimereports. asp.