Birmingham revamps crime mapping system

BIRMINGHAM — The Birmingham Police Department has recently changed how people can view crimes that occur within the city with a new tool housed directly on the city’s website, making it easy and accessible for the public to find, officials said.

“We were looking for a way to basically have a program in-house so that we can post the reports in a timely manner,” Birmingham Police Chief Scott Grewe said.

By looking at crime reports, the community can be more aware of what is happening around them. These reports will be displayed in a map format, so people know where the crime took place.

Birmingham Communications Director Marianne Gamboa said that the map view can be helpful for residents to see where crimes are happening and can make them aware of when they need to be extra vigilant about securing their property and being safe.

“It is very important to us to be transparent,” Gamboa said. “We want the community to know incidents that are taking place right here in Birmingham, and we want them to see everything that the Police Department is doing and working on to keep them safe.”

The new online crime mapping tool will be updated weekly and will include information about recent crimes in Birmingham, such as dates, times, general locations, types of crime and a brief description of the incidents. In addition to the map view, the reports will also be available in list view.

It was developed by the Birmingham IT and Media Specialist Jamil Kim. It will be maintained by the Birmingham Police Department and communications team.

Prior to this new system, the Birmingham Police Department would post their crime reports on an external website called Crimedar. The way in which crimes are posted and viewed now is fairly similar to the old system, except the city is no longer relying on an external website.

“The goal is to not only to keep people informed on what’s going on in the city, but also then bring them to a page where they can find out a lot of information about the Police Department, what the Police Department is doing in terms of traffic enforcement, special events and traffic mitigation programs that we have,” Grewe said. “It is basically about connecting them with additional information, not just the crime reports.”

The community can now learn about the Police Department, look at police alerts and view crimes that are taking place in the community all in one spot.

Check out the new crime mapping tool at bhamgov.org/crime.

The community can also join the Nixle program to receive breaking news over text messages and email. Residents can register at Nixle.com or by sending a text message with the ZIP code 48009 to 888777. For more information on this, call Patrol Capt. Ryan Kearney at (248) 530-1768.