Web sites give voyeurs view of neighborhood safety
Associated Press, Alex Veiga, July 18, 2008
LOS ANGELES — I have no reason to feel unsafe in my neighborhood, but I
appear to be surrounded by dozens of people convicted of everything from
theft and sex crimes to public drunkenness and speeding.
Not that I think of my slice of Los Angeles as Wisteria Lane. But the sight
of a map pinpointing exactly where these lawbreakers live — or once lived — can
rattle your sense of what a safe neighborhood is.
I got some insight into the criminal quotient in my neighborhood on several
websites that turn government data into interactive guides of criminal activity.
For home buyers, these sites can be a tempting tool to discern whether a neighborhood
is rife with crime, or a great place to raise the kids. But how accurate are the
pictures they portray?
One site that debuted Friday is CriminalSearches.com.
Created by the folks behind PeopleFinders.com, the new site crunches monthly government
data down to the state and county level, says Bryce Lane, president and chief operating
officer of PeopleFinders.com.
"What we're really good at is establishing connections across all these different data
sets, linking it back to a particular person," Lane said, acknowledging, however, that
some data might be missing. The company also doesn't tap into federal crime data.
The Neighborhood Watch feature lets you focus your search by address or ZIP code. You
can also search by a person's name or specific home address, and there's a separate
search with a detailed map of registered sex offenders.
Punch in the details and the site generates a map showing small squares that represent
each person who resides — or previously resided — in the area and was convicted of a
crime at some point. In some cases, the site will turn up people who were arrested,
but never convicted.
Click on an individual square and you can get the exact address for the person and a
description of their violation, among other details.
The results can be eye-opening.
But as I dug deeper into the results I found that many people are listed for traffic
violations, or a crime they committed decades ago, maybe in another state.
PropertyShark.com offers a more current snapshot of crime.
In some of the metro areas, such as Los Angeles, the site links to the police
department's website, where users can generate neighborhood maps overlaid with crime
data less than a week old.
Some sites take a wider approach, showing crime trends but not specific locations.
PolicyMap.com taps Census data down to the each tract of land. It also works in FBI
crime data at a county level. (The site plans to add city-level crime statistics
in a few weeks.)
Like the other sites, PolicyMap lets you drill down to the neighborhood level
surrounding a specific address. The map, uses a color system to show the degree to
which a certain crime has occurred in the area.
PolicyMap also provides other community characteristics. You can see the percentage
of campaign contributions that went to senators Barack Obama or John McCain, as well
as the area's ethnic composition, or even the percent of all home loans that were
subprime.
But some of the data are old. The most recent FBI crime data on the site, for
example, is from 2006.
Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at the University of
Southern California, says the wealth of data provided on sites like these can distort
what's happening in a given community.
"It amounts to a rumor that's constructed out of real data, but presented in a way as
though it represents a level of threat, that's how people read it," Myers said. "And
whether it actually represents risk to the buyer is totally uncertain."
Some home buyers may take them to heart as they go about their house hunting, in some
cases steering them away, Myers says.
"This kind of information, which might have questionable value or really only marginal
value, could put a real chill on the housing market in some neighborhoods, just because
people can afford to be really picky right now," he says.
At CriminalSearches.com, Lane contends that his service can help educate and inform
people about those living around them.
In a survey of home buyers last year by the National Association of Realtors, 65% of
respondents said that the quality of a neighborhood was the most important criteria in
selecting a home. That was ahead of convenience to job location and affordability. The
survey did not specifically ask about crime.
But to what degree does having access to all this information answer whether a
neighborhood is safe or not?
Some buyers, like Roseanne Coyle of Ontario, Calif., go by their guts.
"I've driven past those (houses) I was interested in at different times to see what
it's like around there," said Coyle, 40, a vocational teacher and mother of two teens
who has ramped up her home search this summer.
"We pay attention to (details like) are there bars on windows," she says, noting the
only crime-related websites she's checked are state sites listing registered sex offenders.
Perhaps, the perception of safety hinges as much on a neighborhood's look — manicured
lawns and nice cars in driveways. Or on what it doesn't have: graffiti, homeless people,
unkempt lawns.
Crime statistics won't show you that, but they don't make you feel
safer, either.
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