Tag: OpenDataPhilly

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Philly Blotter Next Great Step in Crime Reporting

Philly Blotter

Chris Sawyer, guru of Philadelinquency has done it again.  I have been using his Courtwatch data since he started offering it on the web site.  Courtwatch made court and arrest information for the first time in a usable way to the public.  It became possible to find out if an arrest had been made for a particular crime and the status of the case.

Now here he comes with an app for the iphone or android called Philly Blotter that puts it all in one place in the palm of your hand.  If you want to know what is going on around your house, you can customize a zone for yourself and it will give you the information.  If a burglary hits your street you can followup to see if an arrest has been made.  You can filter in or out any number of crimes.  One of the best features is that it gives you the definitions of the various crime categories and the possible penalty for each.  It is not free but at $4.99 it is a bargain.  Take a closer look at this link.

Frankford Crime Report for PSA1 for October

The crime report for October thanks to date from OpenDataPhilly shows continued drop in major crimes with a slight upturn in crimes using firearms.  Increased police presence may be the key.

crime summary.xlsx

 

 

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PSA1 Crime Report for May for the 15th District

Overall crime incidents in the 15th District PSA1 for the first 5 months of the year reported are down compared to last year by about 10%.  May of 2016 compared to 2015 is down 16%.

crime summary may

Thanks to OpenDataPhilly we have a lot more information about crime.  The data available goes back to 2006 and includes the entire city which amounts to 2 million reports.  It now includes all incidents rather than only the most serious categories.

crime summary

 

The Gazette will continue to report crime news as it impacts our daily lives in as balanced a way as possible.  We can’t ignore it but Frankford is much more than the crime stats indicate.

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Violence in Frankford

Homicides

January 16th on the 4600 block of Penn – 201615004629

February 3rd on the 1800 block of Fillmore – 201615009784

February 20th on the 4800 block of Penn – 201615014979

March 17th on the 4700 block of Oxford – 201615023994

March 23rd on the 1600 block of Pratt – 201615025965

March 23rd on the 1600 block of Pratt – 201615025900

After 6 homicides in the 15th District PSA 1 over a three month period, Frankford is on track to set a record this year for murder in the community.  See the March crime summary on the chart below and you can see the detailed report at this link.

crime

Only one of those homicides has lead to an arrest so far.  Local video surveillance cameras helped identify suspects in the incident on the 4800 block of Penn Street.

The number code following the crime is one way of tracking an incident.  Thanks to Christopher Sawyer at philadelinquency.com who has given us a new tool for tracking this information with CourtWatch.  Besides a huge collection of other interesting stuff, he has provided this great tool for tracking arrests.  

Thanks to OpenDataPhilly for making this raw data available for our use.

If you are concerned about violence in Frankford and want to take action, there is a meeting at St. Marks Church at 4442 Frankford Avenue on Monday, April 11th at 6 PM.

 

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February Crime Report for 15th District PSA1

The crime rate in PSA1, which includes Frankford/Northwood and Bridesburg, showed little change over past years for February.

There were two homicides however.  Arrests have already been made in the one on Penn Street on February 20th.  Excellent work by the officers who responded who located a video of the crime within 20 minutes of when the victim was found.  That provided the homicide detectives with a starting point which lead to the two suspects’ apprehension.

The date provided by OpenDataPhilly comes right from the police department and includes a category called “recovered stolen vehicles”.  I have backed that number out of the total because if the vehicle was stolen it is already reported under that category and it makes no sense to report it again.  Follow this link to a complete report on the details of the crimes including locations.

The weather has been warm and according to criminologists and common sense, that influences the crime rate.  We have made an attempt to correlate crime with weather in the chart below.  Looking at the average mean temperature for each month you can see that February of 2015 was the coldest February in the last 3 years.  February of 2014 was warmer and February of 2016 was the warmest.  The crime rate follows the same pattern.  Thanks to Jamie Fader.

crime february 2016

 

 

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No Holiday for Criminals in December

Mild weather in December was great for everybody including  criminals in PSA1 of the 15th District. Property crimes of burglary and theft from vehicles were up as the crooks too advantage of the good weather and open windows, to do there dastardly deeds.

You can see the detailed report at this link and below is a summary.  Look for these numbers to drop as the miscreants take some time off when the weather returns to its seasonal norm.

crime report

A word about this report is in order.  We take the data from OpenDataPhilly in raw form.  If you look closely at the details you will sometimes find things that look to be in error.  Its not too unusual to see an incident report followed shortly by another going to the same address for the same complaint.  We have no way to determine whether that is right or not, so we do not make any adjustments to the data.

There is a known flaw in the data when someone is shot and the crime is identified as aggravated assault. If the victim then dies at a later date, it remains on this report as aggravated assault.  There is no way for us to make that kind of correction.

If you want to find out more about crime and meet the police who patrol the PSA, come out to the next meeting at Aria Hospital on January 28th at 7PM.