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INTRODUCTION:
In urban areas across the United States, the number of daily lethal crimes
is growing in seriousness in the 2015-2018 time frame.
For example, in the
Hampton Roads area of Virginia, the number of drive-by shootings
and lethal shootings into dwellings and cars seems to be on the rise.
Many of these shootings remain unsolved. A newpaper article indicated that
about 68% of shootings go unsolved ... at least in this urban area on the
East Coast, in 2018.
It is getting to the point that there are sections of urban areas that
present YOU with a significant probablility of being shot. It is getting so that
one has to be very careful to NOT be "in the wrong place at the wrong time".
There WERE times (in the 'good old days') when it seemed like an outdoor music concert
on a weekend would be a pleasant experience. Now, it means gambling with your life.
It is safer to stay at home and watch music concerts via TV or Internet.
But even that is not safe. In some areas, the number of fatalities from
shootings into homes is on the rise.
NOTE:
In November 2017, I saw an article in a New Zealand newspaper
in which they talked about police there wearing 'stab proof' vests.
They have so few shootings in New Zealand (and Australia) that police
wear vests to protect from stab wounds, not bullet wounds. The U.S. Congress
needs to do some information gathering in New Zealand --- instead
of wearing blinders and taking money from gun lobbyists.
In the meantime, see the following.
A Course of Action:
(to stem the tide of lethal shootings)
It is time that modern digital electronics be employed to help
catch those who are perpetrating crimes such as drive-by shootings.
In the 2015-2018 time frame, there are traffic cameras at major intersections
of almost every urban area. These cameras are high-resolution cameras
that are capable of catching images of license plates.
In fact, some people have probably had the experience of accidentally
going through a toll-tunnel (not seeing a toll money receptacle)
and finding a letter in the mail about a week later --- with a high-resolution
image of their license plate in the letter.
With these camera capabilities in the 2015-2018 time frame, it is
time to put these capabilities to work on public streets to stem
the incidents of unsolved shootings (and armed robberies, car jackings,
burglaries, rapes, purse snatchings, etc.).
I know I would gladly see my tax dollars being spent on adding
cameras in high-crime areas (and in 'mobile', randomly-chosen areas),
in order to catch the violence-prone members of society who have
to be stopped from killing and injuring multiple people.
After all, it is more important to use cameras to reduce lethal
crimes than to hand out traffic tickets.
Where to place the cameras:
A major issue in deploying the cameras becomes 'where to place
the cameras'.
It will probably not be cost-effective to put cameras on every
block of every street in a large urban area. So it becomes a
matter of putting cameras in high-crime areas.
And some cameras could be placed in randomly chosen areas
on various days of the week --- much like speed-notification devices
are moved to 'complaint areas' in various parts of town to let automobile drivers
know when they are exceeding the local speed limit.
Another issue is how frequently should cameras be taking pictures.
Probably taking movies is too data intensive at this time (2018) --- and it
may not result in the highest quality images. So cameras taking images
about every second (or every 5 seconds) --- rather than about 25 times
per second which is typical for movies --- would probably be sufficient
to capture most criminal activities in the camera view.
This would also allow for taking high-quality images
that would reveal license plate numbers and car make-and-model-and-year
and facial features and clothing features and weapon features
and other identifying information.
NOTE:
I am not proposing putting cameras in people's homes. (I will leave
that to Google, Facebook, and others of that ilk of privacy intrusionists.)
I am proposing putting cameras on public streets --- like traffic cameras
that are being deployed in the 2015-2018 time frame.
A Reason for this Menu Page:
(example maps of crime locations)
A major reason for this page is to provide examples of how data
could be assembled to help place cameras in crime-prone areas.
It becomes helpful to create pin-studded maps --- on which
the pins indicate where crimes have occurred.
The links below provide lists of information (date, location,
type of crime, etc.) --- for a particular metropolitan area
--- in this case, a 'Peninsula area' in the Hampton Roads area
of Virginia, where the cities of Hampton and Newport News are
situated (along with Poquoson, Phoebus, and York County).
The lists of crime data are used to place 'pins' on a map of the
Peninsula area.
The 'pins' have pop-up labels of information (when clicked) ---
and the maps are zoom-able and pan-able.
The crime-prone areas may shift over time, so the lists and maps
are grouped by year --- 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, etc. (There are
on the order of at least 50 to 100 shootings on the Peninsula in these
years --- about 2 shootings per week, sometimes more. That results in
a lot of pins on each 'one-year map'.)
Info on Making Crime Maps:
Some information is collected, in a 'Notes on Making Crime Maps' link below,
on how the maps can be created
--- including information on how the HTML-and-Javascript-and-CSS web-page
programming is done to create maps and place pins and popups on maps.
An image (and 2 links) at the top of the
'Notes on Making Crime Maps' page shows that, in 2016, the Daily Press
newspaper showed a map of two months of crimes (Jan, Feb 2016) on the Peninsula.
BUT ... it seems that no other such 'multi-pin' maps were published. AND ...
such a map does not necessarily show the types of crimes that the reader
would like to see emphasized. AND ... the map was created with
not-so-easy-to-use software that makes it not-so-easy for most people
to make (and modify) maps like these.
These pages are intended (eventually) to provide information and
examples on how to gather information to help with reduction
of violent crimes. In fact, the readers of these pages are welcome
to use any HTML-code or map-making info here to start web-pages
and maps of their own.
In fact, the intent of these pages is to, eventually, provide
year-by-year maps of serious crime (such as shootings --- including
woundings and property damage, as well as murders) --- in the
example 'Peninsula' area --- with the crime
locations denoted by 'markers' on the yearly maps. Each marker is to
to contain a brief description of the crime at the location that
is 'pinned'.
The
'Leaflet' set of Javascript utilities --- which are referred to
briefly on the
'Notes on Making Crime Maps' page --- will probably be used
to generate the yearly maps --- as interactive 'slippy' maps --- using the
individual-crime-instances data seen on these 'yearly crime pages'.
The 'Leaflet' software uses
OpenStreetMap map 'tiles' to make the
'dynamic' maps. This is 'free and open source' software and image files.
Enough of this 'Introduction'.
Below is a 'Table of Contents' which provides links (by year) to crime data
and associated maps.
And there are web-links (at the bottom of the table) on
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