Brooklyn Neighborhood

The Portland Police Bureau is allowing residents to access a very current list of crime in the city via a new website.  Read what the Police Bureau has to say (I’ve given it a run and it’s pretty interest and a little disconcerting) after the jump… 

Portland Police Bureau partners with crime reporting service

By the Strategic Services Division
Portland Police Bureau

Portland residents now have free access to
information on calls for service that occurred as
recently as the previous day.

CrimeReports.com is a nationwide, web-based
service that displays on a map easy-to-read crime
data on calls made to 9-1-1. CrimeReports.com is
not a part of the City of Portland or the Portland
Police Bureau, but its data can be accessed
through www.crimereports.com or through the
Police Bureau’s website at
www.portlandpolice.com. This data is provided to
CrimeReports.com by the Portland Police Bureau.

CrimeReports.com uses 16 major crime categories
on its database. However, some agencies might
use different names for these categories. For example, California uses the “vehicle burglary”
category while Portland uses “theft.” Also, the Portland Police Bureau does not release address
information for specific types of 9-1-1 calls, like sexual assault, domestic violence, harassment
and alarms.

One special feature of this service allows residents to receive automatic daily, weekly or monthly
email alerts if and when crimes occur near their home, office, school or other specified areas.

Crime data is updated nightly and includes incident type, date, block location, event
identification/case number and brief description of the incident. However, not all calls to 9-1-1
turn out to be a crime or what was originally reported. For example, a call of shots fired might
turn out to be fireworks or a car backfiring.

The Portland Police Bureau’s other crime mapping tools, CrimeMapper and CrimeStats, use
information taken from police reports. These tools can also be accessed through the Police
Bureau’s website.

For more information on CrimeReports.com, go to www.CrimeReports.com.