Newark Launches New Crime Mapping Software

The Newark Police Department launched a web-based crime-mapping product on Monday, marking a new era of transparency for the public safety agency.

The Newark edition of the “Citizen RIMS” software is the child of a partnership between Sun Ridge Systems and the police records department. The Newark Police Department has been working on integrating records with this software for the past three months.  

Since Sun Ridge Systems first merged its computer-aided design software with public records almost 25 years ago, the company has created partnerships with more than 100 cities in California.

The software slurps police call information into its processors then categorizes and publishes the calls into an array of multi-colored pins on a google map. You can click on the pin to learn what transpired at each location. The different colored pins are also numerically cross-referenced with a key to give users greater details.

A popup disclaimer on the site warns that the information may not be complete, or even accurate. Nonetheless, we took it for a test run to see what it could do. Many of the features work seamlessly, although the graphics appear to be frozen in 1995.  

The Crime Charts feature is still a work in progress. However, the heat map illuminated a few interesting crime trends.   

The map which is featured in the graphic that accompanies this article  visualizes how many “Animal Issues,” “Proactive Enforcement,” “Suspicious Circumstances,” and “Quality of Life” calls the Newark Police had processed in the past week. 

What do you think of Citizen RIMS system?