urbanSTL

There are several IPhone Apps related to crime that use your location to show crimes and crime rate in your immediate area. These are designed to help you avoid high crime areas, but could also give a false sense of security.

What if someone created an IPhone app that you could touch when you see someone committing a crime. Say a guy gets out a gun. You reach into your pocket and touch this app and point the camera at the criminal. It turns on the camera and sound and location and immediately starts uploading the info to some kind of 911 type location, (or even a public board) where a trained individual (or anyone viewing the public board) starts watching realtime and notifies authorities. The app could even make the IPhone flash several times at the criminal letting the criminal know you have the anti-crime app, and that it is streaming and recording his actions out realtime. Essentially, everyone with an Iphone would be like Channel Four standing there with a camera crew. Maybe it could start automatically on detection of a nearby gunshot sound signature to at least capture sound.

The saved stream would have the location, time, date, video and photos of the perpetrator, all saved for prosecution later, also. It would also be a public record on this person that future employers, spouses, etc. could use for their own decision making, too.

Wouldn't having essentially a camera crew streaming your crime realtime make some of these criminals think twice before they do something in public?

^ I'm pretty sure if a criminal saw someone standing there recording them they just might make that person their next victim. And instead of using an app you could just get the best description possible, hide, and call 911.

stlwriterman wrote:

framer wrote:Can we get Sheriff Joe to move here?

You mean the guy from Phoenix? It seems like all he cares about is Mexicans. We don't have so many of those here. Last thing we need to be doing is chasing off immigrants.

Before he became known for harsh treatment of suspected illegal immigrants, Sheriff Joe made a name for himself with his no-nonsense approach to the detention of criminals. As he says, "If you don't like my jail, then don't come back".

STL88 wrote:^ I'm pretty sure if a criminal saw someone standing there recording them they just might make that person their next victim. And instead of using an app you could just get the best description possible, hide, and call 911.

That is the point of streaming it through the phone link offline where somebody will be watching. If I went to a board where I could see a video of someone committing a crime live, I would call the authorities and give them the info. If this prompts a quick response, and these guys start getting caught, they might have to start respecting the power of the device up front and think twice about committing crimes against people. It could deter like a last resort weapon for those who don't want to carry a gun.

Wow, I didn't hear about this:

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyr ... _broad.php

A block away from us. But if these folks want to keep killing each other in broad daylight, while I'm working, that's fine with me.

This is another "cities" list. This is just another reason to either bring the City back into the County and merge the crime statistics for reporting, or do like Chicago and dump the standardized FBI reporting so the city doesn't show up on any "city" crime ranking -- force the rankers to go to the metro level to compare. These city-level crime rankings have done immeasurable harm to the whole area. If the ranking statisticians are too damn lazy to normalize the numbers to truly compare apples to apples, then we should just stop playing their game.

gary kreie wrote:

STL88 wrote:^ I'm pretty sure if a criminal saw someone standing there recording them they just might make that person their next victim. And instead of using an app you could just get the best description possible, hide, and call 911.

That is the point of streaming it through the phone link offline where somebody will be watching. If I went to a board where I could see a video of someone committing a crime live, I would call the authorities and give them the info. If this prompts a quick response, and these guys start getting caught, they might have to start respecting the power of the device up front and think twice about committing crimes against people. It could deter like a last resort weapon for those who don't want to carry a gun.

Considering the way normal 911 gets abused, I can only imagine how bad this could get. The only way I could see a system like this working is if the number of the recording phone is captured; and that probably means it will have to go straight to 911.

marigolds wrote:

gary kreie wrote:

STL88 wrote:^ I'm pretty sure if a criminal saw someone standing there recording them they just might make that person their next victim. And instead of using an app you could just get the best description possible, hide, and call 911.

That is the point of streaming it through the phone link offline where somebody will be watching. If I went to a board where I could see a video of someone committing a crime live, I would call the authorities and give them the info. If this prompts a quick response, and these guys start getting caught, they might have to start respecting the power of the device up front and think twice about committing crimes against people. It could deter like a last resort weapon for those who don't want to carry a gun.

Considering the way normal 911 gets abused, I can only imagine how bad this could get. The only way I could see a system like this working is if the number of the recording phone is captured; and that probably means it will have to go straight to 911.

It should be easy to capture the recording phone number just through caller ID. The app could turn on caller ID, and the instructions could say that any upload that blocks caller ID will be ignored.

Can someone subtract 30,000 from the population to get a more concrete crime rate? As usual I see complaints about changing perception instead of reality.

STL88 wrote:Can someone subtract 30,000 from the population to get a more concrete crime rate? As usual I see complaints about changing perception instead of reality.

What is your proposal for changing what you consider reality?

Alex Ihnen wrote:

STL88 wrote:Can someone subtract 30,000 from the population to get a more concrete crime rate? As usual I see complaints about changing perception instead of reality.

That's a false choice foisted upon those who understand the damage being done to St. Louis by the misrepresented crime stats. EVERYONE WANTS THERE TO BE LESS CRIME. WE ALL WANT THE REALITY TO CHANGE. Many of us also want to stop having our city put down and made to look less safe than other cities when that is simply not reality.

I keep seeing this, but I never see supportive evidence. Nor do I see the supportive evidence that says we are among the worst. If people are going off the list that makes it to STLToday, then shame on them. That paper will print anything and rarely do I see quality reports make it to that paper... aside from some of the Bookings Institute stuff (but even then, the Post reads the executive summary of the report and claims they know something about the report.).

zun1026 wrote:

Alex Ihnen wrote:

STL88 wrote:Can someone subtract 30,000 from the population to get a more concrete crime rate? As usual I see complaints about changing perception instead of reality.

That's a false choice foisted upon those who understand the damage being done to St. Louis by the misrepresented crime stats. EVERYONE WANTS THERE TO BE LESS CRIME. WE ALL WANT THE REALITY TO CHANGE. Many of us also want to stop having our city put down and made to look less safe than other cities when that is simply not reality.

I keep seeing this, but I never see supportive evidence. Nor do I see the supportive evidence that says we are among the worst. If people are going off the list that makes it to STLToday, then shame on them. That paper will print anything and rarely do I see quality reports make it to that paper... aside from some of the Bookings Institute stuff (but even then, the Post reads the executive summary of the report and claims they know something about the report.).

People who don't read the P-D's website might instead read Time Magazine or The New York Daily News or The Daily Mail or FOX News or Reuters or USA Today, etc.

Some of those articles do mention the faults of the study (in fact the AP article that most news orgs buy and run verbatim mentions that), but what's remembered by most is the headline. Yes, shame on them for doing so, but shouting shame doesn't change the perception of the masses.

If one can't stop Morgan Quintno from publishing the study and news agencies from running it, then one could and should consider whether it's wise to continue publishing such data to be misconstrued and trumpeted to the detriment of the metro area.

-RBB

I called the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services a few months ago about this.

Every jurisdiction in IL but Rockford and all but Minneapolis and St Paul in MN who report don't show a number under the forcible rape column which is what is incomparable with CQ Press' analysis. So that's why we don't see Chicago, etc on the city list and why St Louis Metro doesn't appear on the Metro list anymore, My best guess as to why KC Metro doesn't appear on the Metro rankings is because some of the counties in its MSA don't have County PDs or they don't report.

Turns out in IL at least the state definition of forcible rape includes male/male (don't know why Rockford is different) whereas elsewhere that'd be called forcible sodomy. Stats are delivered from the police department for its jurisdiction to a state UCR program under the MO Dept of Public Safety then to the FBI. The population stat on the table comes from the Census Bureau. The data do not contain specifics like addresses, at least when they get to the FBI.

St Louis County PD appears under the FBI County table without a population figure. Fenton and Wildwood do not appear under the city table. St Louis County PD is contracted to provide their police services.

IL city table:
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_08_il.html

MO city table
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_08_mo.html

MO county table:
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_10_mo.html


So what do we do about it?
1. Decrease the numerator
2. Increase the denominator
3. Break the analysis

1. Hard. Although it is shameful that Pittsburgh had 39 murders in 2009 and St Louis had 143 with almost the same population.
2. I asked if the SLMPD expanded to patrol one of the suburbs while STL City's boundaries remained the same what would happen to the population number. The FBI guy wasn't sure. We certainly don't want to increase the numerator without increasing the denominator by a greater amount! Does anyone know of somewhere where the central city's namesake PD patrols an area greater than the central city?
3. Sounds like that takes a state policy change of a crime category's definition

The FBI guy said there was going to be a meeting in St Louis in April to discuss this stuff among other things. I don't know if anything came of it.

gone corporate wrote:The only reason I could think of for Saint Louis' reporting its crime stats to the FBI (from which these data points could be tabulated into a list) is that, in doing so, the City's able to realize Federal funding for fighting crime, etc. It's the only reason that makes any sense to mere for why we do what we do. I do believe I've heard this before from a credible source, but hearing it from others would help validate it.

Does anyone know whether our submitting the crime data per the FBI stats sheet gets Saint Louis additional Federal funding?
Or am I misunderstood here?

Please respond only if you know. Thanks.

Chicago does report their stats to the FBI as well.

The problem with Chicago stats is that the State of Illinois uses different crime definitions than every other State, so Illinois statistics are not comparable to other States. Hence, CQ Press excludes Illinois cities from their rankings.

Illinois was directed by the FBI to revise their definitions in 2010, so Chicago may be on the CQ Press list next year.

UCR participation is voluntary, and as far as I know there are no consequences at the local level for not participating. The Attorney General does have the authority to order States to participate.

While UCR participation is not mandatory, many States, including Missouri, have legislation that makes it mandatory for all jurisdictions in that State. Also, any jurisdiction which does not report UCR statistics will lose their accreditation (though if I remember right, less than 5% of departments are accredited nationwide anyway).

What benefit do we get from being accredited?

gary kreie wrote:What benefit do we get from being accredited?

Our criminals can graduate to federal offenses without having to take any tests.

^Ouch. No offense, but that sounds more like a Scrutinizer joke.