Sheriff’s Department goes live at CrimeMapping.com

Staff Report

In an effort to help reduce crime and further strengthen local community-oriented policing efforts, the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department recently went live at CrimeMapping.com.

CrimeMapping.com is a nationwide public mapping service that allows residents to analyze interactive maps of recent crime activity. Visitors to the site can generate reports, search by location and filter for different time periods as well as crime types.

Keeping the public well informed has been proven effective as a crime-fighting strategy and the Sheriff’s Office is proactively sharing information within Winnebago County as well as the Village of Machesney Park, which the county polices by contract.

Crime Alerts are one of the most popular features at CrimeMapping.com. Residents can register online to receive free updates via e-mail whenever new crime activity occurs in their area. Users choose the distance as well as crimes they wish to stay informed about.

A single user can register multiple times to learn about activity occurring near their residence, place of business or even their child’s school of attendance.

The information posted is always current, as data is uploaded to the system every 24 hours.

The incident records information used is thoroughly tested and represents some of the highest levels of integrity and accuracy available for any public crime-mapping site.

To view this data, visit the Sheriff’s Office home page (www.winnebagosheriff.com) and select the icon along the left column, which will take you directly to the crime activity records for the office for the past week. Select different date ranges, crimes and locations by navigating through the various features of the site. You may also access the information, or information for any agency participating in this program, by going directly to www.CrimeMapping.com and selecting any participating agency from the home page map.

From the July 25-31, 2012, issue