Interface

If you have any questions about OakCrime.org, send a message to info@oakcrime.org. Please include which beat / NCPC you live in (cf. OPD District & Beat Locator), and a description of your intended use of the facility, so we can plan accordingly.

With a valid login, you will see the home splash page shown below:

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There are currently four starting points for analysis of OPD incident data:

Heatmap overview

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The central map shows a heatmap of crime across all of Oakland during the last 90 days. You should (depending on your web browser client's capabilities) be able to shift and zoom in and out on this map to capture a region as you wish.

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The figure above shows the date sliders at the top have been slid to select a narrower date range. Similarly, some of the crime category buttons along the left side have been selected. After zooming in and setting date and crime categories, hit the blue Update selection button and a new map will be repopulated according to these constraints. The result is shown in the figure below.

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If you zoom in close enough, the heatmap dissolves into a set of individual points that each correspond to specific incidents. Major crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, assault or weapons charges) are plotted with red pins, all other crimes use green pins. Yellow dots correspond to incidents described only in Patrol logs, but not in the standard incident reporting. Clicking any incident marker pops up its details (incident number, date and time, and crime category).

The highlighted blue incident number is a hot link that goes to an incident-specific report page.

Gun-related crimes

This view shows only crimes involving guns, as reported in the patrol logs, but otherwise follows the same basic operation as the heatmap.

Longitudinal crime types analysis

This workflow begins with the longitudinal plot query page:

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This form asks a user to specify a Beat of interest, then either one or two Crime Categories. All incidents since 2007 are included in the resulting plot.

The figure below shows the result of a query concerning beat 07X, and COURT (blue lines) and HOMICIDE (green lines) crime types:

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As part of the title, the total number of (both beat and all-Oakland) incidents is shown for each crime type. Then, for each Crime Category, both:

• the absolute number of incidents per month (solid line), and
• the city-wide average across all beats (dotted line)

are plotted.

Geographic analysis of recent crimes

A second workflow allows investigation of crime incidents based on their location. Results near pre-computed BART stops can be used to plot nearby crimes. The plot below shows incidents during the previous six months near the Macarthur BART station.

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The total number of crimes appears in the plot title. Major crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, assault or weapons charges) are plotted with red pins, all other crimes use green pins. Mousing over any incident marker pops up its details (incident number, date and time, and crime category).

A similar analysis is available for some (District 4) Oakland parks.

API

Three API endpoints have been defined, mirroring query patterns of the interface. All queries begin with the same oakcrime.org/dailyIncid prefix, followed by one of three different strings:

1. For crimes relating to a specific beat, eg: beatAPI/03X/

   restricted to the last two years.

2. For crimes of a certain category, eg: crimeCatAPI/LARCENY_THEFT_VEHICLE_AUTO

   restricted to last 6 months

3. For crimes within 500m of some longitude_latitude, eg: nearHereAPI/-122.265944_37.828199

   restricted to last 6 months. Note that longitude is provided first, and separated by an underbar(_) from latitude.

The default result is an HTML page. JSON output can be returned instead by adding the suffix ?format=json to the query, eg oakcrime.org/dailyIncid/beatAPI/07X/?format=json.

NCPC reports

Users that have been identified as the contact representative for their local Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) (send a message to info@oakcrime.org if you play this role in your neighborhood) can access a report in preparation for their regular meeting. An example is shown in this figure:

The report heading lists the dates for your beat that are included. In the map, incidents that OPD has assigned to your beat(s) are shown in large red circles. A relaxed "bounding box" around these incidents is shown as a gray rectangle. This region defines a larger set of other incidents in the vicinity of your beat. These other adjacent incidents are marked with smaller black dots. (Black dots within the beat seem to suggest incidents with incorrect beat assignment by OPD.)

Clicking on any dot will pop-up date and crime type information particular to that incident. The highlighted blue incident number is a hot link that goes to an incident-specific report page.

Above the map is a blue "Download beat data" button. Clicking it will download A CSV file to your computer like this:

It containing all incidents associated with your beat (but not those only in the vicinity) during the time period.