Oakland Crimespotting

Oakland Crimespotting is a research project of Stamen Design developed as a response to the existing Oakland, California Police Department crime-reporting application, CrimeWatch. It is an instance of the now-familiar "mashup", an online application derived from multiple input data sources. Many works in this genre stop at placing colored pins on a map, but we looked at ways to expand the typical functionality of the ubiquitous crime map to make it more useful for local citizens. As with many projects, Crimespotting didn't start with a concrete goal in mind; it was born out of frustration, matured through basic technical research, and finally made public after a traumatic crime in Oakland focused national attention on the city.