Mugging Map

This map is great -- I posted a bunch of pins based on muggings and other robberies and violent crime within Park Slope/Prospect Heights/Crown Heights from a couple of sources: The Brooklyn Paper and Errol's Save Brooklyn Now! website.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/
http://savebrooklynnow.blogspot.com/

Any thoughts as to limiting this map by area/date/type of crime? I'd be inclined to remove non-violent crime, such as car windows being broken, breaking-and-entering, etc., and focus more on mugging-type incidents.

Ben wrote: I know this map isn't complete with every incident posted but I found something very interesting. The areas with the most reported incidents are not the ones that people would typically think. For instance, the areas around washington ave, down by pacific/dean and washington/grand/classon, franklin, classon, bedford, etc. do not appear to be hot spots for this type of thing. Rather it is the area by flatbush and the areas coming away from subway stops the present the most danger.

It also shows that while people may perceive that Prospect Heights and the western side of Crown Heights are less safe than areas like Park Slope it doesn't appear to be the case, at least based on this map. It looks like you have a better chance of getting mugged if you get off at the grand army plaza stop than you do at the franklin ave stop.

Wikipedia wrote: Willie Sutton
Sutton is famously (and probably falsely) known for answering a reporter, Mitch Ohnstad, who asked why he robbed banks by saying, "because that's where the money is."

hey!
long time no post. I thought I'd chime in here a little bit.
I think that there has been a jump in crime all over the city, not just here in this 'hood. I think everyone can be super sensitive to their own circumstance. For whatever its value, and im *sure* its not all-inclusive, gothamist has what they call a 'happenings' map http://gothamist.com/labs/map which I'm sure you are all familiar with. and if you watch it with any regularity you'll see that there also seems to be a noticeable jump in crime on the UWS. It might also be in other neighborhoods, but I'm only paying attention to mine (here) and my gf's (there).
I think its good for people to make announcements about this stuff but as its been said before and i wont belabor the point, you live in a city and its everyones responsibility to look out for themselves. But there are added bonus karma points for watching out for your neighbors too!
you would want someone looking out for you.

One thing I really like about the possibilities of THIS map is that muggings, with or without assault and with or without showing up on the police blotter (which doesn't show these more *minor* events), would be marked. And we get to see the accumulation, which is different from indvidual reportings, different from the ever-interesting Gothamist map and different from year-end NYPD figures.

Thanks for logging the details of location and which muggings had a violent component, etc.
I sometimes read the pd blotter in a local paper, but I don't always. A daylight mugging on my block turned up on the map that I didn't know about...

how far back in time are we going?

Subject: thanks!

this map is incredibly helpful. thank you so much for creating it! and to everyone for posting their incidents.
hopefully there will be less and less as 2008 continues...

King without a crown wrote: There have been several Robberies that have occurred that have not been reported on Brooklynian and also a lot that've never been reported at all.

It's the undetected crimes that scare me the most.

So, anybody clever with Google Maps?
It would be nice to see the list that accompanies this map sorted by date, and perhaps the pins color-coded by incident type...

Isn't there a way to color code the pins? You have more than just "muggings" on the map so maybe if robberies were blue, homicide was red, shots fired could be yellow...

Disregard, Pitu already made the same suggestion.

To change the pin colors:

-Go to google mugging map, select edit mode (you need to be logged in)
-Click on any existing pin
-When edit box appears, you'll see the pin icon in a box at upper right
-Click the icon, and you'll see a whole range of color choices

There are also other icons we could add, aside from just changing the colors.

I changed the Underhill/St John's summer shooting to red, as an example...but I guess we should reach a consensus on the color scheme first...as if anyone here can agree about anything

Edit: Just noticed you can also use custom icons, which might be a good idea. I find the default pins/icons to be too large, given that we are looking at a pretty small area of the map. Any aspiring graphic artist/semiotic/cartographer types care to come up with the first official Prospect Height crime icon series? What an honor!

Someone chose a color scheme and updated the map, but didn't describe their choices. I interpret it as:

red = gun crimes/shootings
blue = mugging/assault
purple = store robbery/break-in
green = quality of life incident/general thugishness (ie bottle throwing)

I posted that in the map description as well. Seems to work...we can always add more colors later.

Pitu- i thought abt the dot/no-dot idea too. The dot is sort of like a bullet hole, so I was thinking crimes committed with weapons get the dot. Might be too subtle a distinction though.

What color should we use for quality-of-life architectural crimes? The blocks to avoid for their eyesores.

Thanks for adding the 77 police station. I didn't know it was so far away. Can you please add other police stations?

poppy13 wrote: Thanks for adding the 77 police station. I didn't know it was so far away. Can you please add other police stations?

A note about the updating of this map:
anybody can do it!
Mr Tips set up an open source, for everybody to participate.

arches wrote: Would officers from the 76th respond to crimes in progress in Prospect Heights? Just curious.

Highly unlikely.