DC’s finest, the Metropolitan Police Department, recently released a new tool on the dc.gov website that actually allows you to see a spatial representation of the kind of crime that is going on our city. Homicide in Shaw? Sex abuse in Mount Pleasant? Stolen auto in Capitol Hill? Nah, couldn’t be. Crime in DC? It’s unheard of!

I personally can’t see a huge benefit from something like this unless you’re very paranoid and want to constantly check out what kind of crime is going on in your neighborhood. Or maybe you were recently the victim of a crime and you want to see if your tiny red thingama-icon made it on to the map? I guess one advantage is that this tool shows whether a particular type of crime has gone up or down, but let’s face it – we live in DC and we have a lot of crime. You know that your chance of getting mugged while walking around 14th and Harvard is greater than if you are walking around the White House, but you just never know. Fatal stabbing in Georgetown? Yep.

One thing to note is that the site currently works using Internet Explorer but has some minor issues with Firefox and other browsers. We have been told that the developers are frantically working to fix this so that the minority of web users can find the number of arsons in Foggy Bottom too.