Police seek input on crime mapping
Neighborhood board members, the police want to hear from you.
The Honolulu Police Department said Friday it plans to seek feedback about its crime mapping program at November neighborhood board meetings around Oahu.
The program has come under fire recently following Honolulu Star-Advertiser stories revealing that HPD excludes violent crimes from its online mapping site. It was the only police department among more than 150 nationally checked by the newspaper to exclude violent crimes from the public maps.
It also excludes violent offenses from the monthly statistics HPD reports to neighborhood boards.
Representatives from about a dozen boards have told the Star-Advertiser they would like to see all crimes plotted on the mapping site and reported to the community groups. Several said similar requests made to HPD over the past several years have gone unheeded.
On Wednesday night the Mililani/Waipio/Melemanu Neighborhood Board adopted a resolution asking HPD to include violent crimes on its mapping site and in monthly board reports.
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HPD launched its mapping service six years ago in response to inquiries from neighborhood boards. At the time, HPD said, they were primarily interested in property crimes.
HPD said Friday it plans to survey neighborhood boards, victim advocates, businesses and others to see whether they would like additional crimes added to the mapping site.
Loretta Sheehan, a new member of the Honolulu Police Commission, said violent crimes should not be excluded.
“If they’re going to provide crime statistics, they can’t provide a half-truth,” Sheehan told the Star-Advertiser. “They have to provide the whole truth.”
14 responses to “Police seek input on crime mapping”
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It’s great that HPD is looking for board input, but the deadline should be extended. Comments are due Nov. 22, but several boards will be meeting after that.
Are you kidding? What do you think neighborhood boards are going to say: Don’t release violent crime data? This entire issue is so bizarre it defies credulity. Crime stats are just that: “CRIME STATS” this isn’t the Clinton era of; “it depends on what the meaning of “is” is.
I agree, and the community should have a chance to provide input. The way this is being done, some boards will not be able to provide a formal opinion to HPD.
Corruption widespread. That’s why we need to vote alternatively on Nov 8. Mayor and police commission are two important choices.
HPD data (sans violent crimes) is available on CrimeMapping.com and its app. Let HPD report all crimes, violent and non-violent. If the user of the site or app does not want to see violent crimes on the map, or any specific category of crimes, they can go into the “What” tab and prevent those categories from displaying. Simple.
The data is there already. All they have to do is compile it all. What are they (HPD) trying to hide?
Maybe HPD forgot where they put that data? Or, they don’t know how to put that data into the system. After all, our government people don’t actually do anything, they just hire an outside consultant to do it for them.
They should put the crime statistics for the year (at least) on a map of Oahu with all areas given an appropriate color from Red (extremely dangerous) to White (meaning Safe if there are any). The maps should be handed out to incoming passengers other than returning residents who should already know.
Can’t make the meeting but may I suggest put a Skull and Crossbones symbol on drugs houses. Drug house in our area for years and still in business while the drugs users rip off the neighborhood to buy the drugs. Crime Map shows everyone getting ripped off all around the drug house. Police called so many times from problems with people going there and fighting or arguing or some other huge problem.
What is there to study by HPD. Publish and map out all the crime date period.
Not only that but HPD should be submitting the crime stats to the FBI like the other police departments on the
other islands. It is very sad to see just how self serving HPD has become.
In their minds I guess they are still the premier police department of Hawaii but I do not think that
most people here agree that this is the case anymore and it has not been the case in over a decade.
To answer this question, we must look at the goal for these crime mapping for the community. It is to alert the community of crimes such as burglary so that they may take precautions. This premise follows the fact that some burglaries occur in certain areas as criminals tend to work on a neighborhood area before moving on. But citizens are not only concerned about burglaries they are also concerned about violence. If the goal is to alert neighborhoods of burglaries, then this model is going to be successful. But burglaries are not the only crimes that citizens are concerned about. They are concerned about violence in their neighborhood. So actually, we really should plot the violent crime incidents on the map. We do not have to place the actual address on the map to protect the victim’s privacy. We can just place them on the map as a general area. Which leads me to the other thing regarding registry. Why do we not have a registry for burglars and other violent criminal offenders? To me, it would be more effective to know who the convicted burglars and violent offenders are in my neighborhood. Crime mapping simply is not proactive but is just a alert system that comes into play only after the fact. It is a good tool for helping our community but a registry for those that commit these types of crimes would be more effective.
Not directly related to the article but why is that we do not have a registry for burglars? Wouldn’t it be helpful for the community if they know where these convicted burglars live? Or how about where these convicted thieves reside? That to me would be more helpful than where these type of crimes show up on the map. As for the topic at hand, they really should include other types of crimes as the citizens are not only concerned about burglaries and thefts.
They’re just trying to do damage control. Place all crime info on your mapping site.
Property crimes? I remember, over 30 years ago, most houses just had carports. The advent of ICE changed all that. In our neighborhood, most everyone has installed garage doors to enclose their carport. Your possessions and vehicles are not safe, and you’re just asking for it without an enclosed garage.