Montgomery Adds Crime-Tracking Map To Open Data Portal

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The city of Montgomery now has a way for residents to track crime in their area, with the click of the mouse.

Montgomery’s open data portal, which already allows you to search through public employee salaries and budget information, now includes interactive data from the fire and police department.

Four times a day, data accessed through the city’s website, will be updated with real time, reports of crime in the city.

The site allows you to tailor your search, to show a specific date or location of incidents. You can even sign up to receive email alerts when a crime happens in an area near you. Montgomery Police department says the technology doubles as a tool for officers.

“As they are driving around in these communities, their maps in their car will show ‘hey this guy’s house had a problem, two or three days ago, and in the past no officer would have known that unless they sifted through mounds of paper work”.

For the Montgomery fire department, this technology will help them find out where they are needed most.
LT. Charles Brady says the site uses google maps to pin point every structure fire in Montgomery since 2016, though “due to privacy concerns we’ve reduced the location to the actual street address but to the block range” he explained.

Brady says this type of data could help lead to quicker response times.

“We can actually visualize it on a map see where our responses are see where our stations are and really can drive where to move stations and where to move resources to”.

Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange says that using data similar to what’s available through the data portal has lead to more arrests this year. The data is available through  crimemapping.com but can also be accessed through the city’s website.