By: Mikel Maron
Washington DC Mayor Mariel Bowser and Police Chief Peter Newsham launched Crime Cards today. Crime Cards is an upgrade from your usual static crime map — it’s a living dashboard that allows DC residents to browse and download crime data across all eight DC wards.
Barney Krucoff, Julie Kanzler, and the team at OCTO built a backend database of hundreds of thousands of incidents on Elasticsearch, using Mapbox GL to power fast, front-end maps. The “conversational” search interface makes working with this complex data set very approachable. We love that they’re making the project open source (soon on their GitHub) — we’re excited to see other cities adopt and extend crime mapping.
I’m incredibly honored to be with Mayor Bowser, Police Chief Newsham and interim CTO Barney Krucoff to announce the launch of Crime Cards. DC Crime Cards is a collaboration between the Metropolitan Police Department and Office of the CTO, and the app has been one of the most popular data apps for the district. The Mapbox team is very proud to be powering the app and helping build a safer and stronger DC — where Mapbox was founded and where we will continue to grow our presence. - Mapbox President & COO, Roy Ng
Urban mapping projects like Crime Cards are part of our DNA. One of the earliest maps we made was Stumble Safely: a map that helped DC residents find safe walking routes. We’ve worked with the DC government on traffic safety mapping; startups like JUMP Mobility to map bike share usage; and nonprofit organizations to document community history.
We’re proud to help our hometown be safer and stronger. Connect with us at Mapbox Cities to learn more.
Washington DC launches Crime Cards was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.