Crime Doesn't Pay; Neither Do Peters Residents For Tracking Criminal Activity

PETERS TOWNSHIP, PA — What have the criminals been up to in your neighborhood? Peters Township residents are now able to track crime in their neighborhood with pinpoint accuracy.

The township police department has begun offering an interactive community crime map that offers details on illegal activities occurring in the township. It enables people to track the location where crimes took place, sign up for delivery of automatic email reports containing breakdowns of recent activity and submit anonymous tips to police.

The map’s users can use drop-down menus to customize the information they want to review. Or they can use default settings to get details on crimes occurring in the township during the past month.

Chief Douglas Grimes said the map already is paying dividends in the form of more accurate information being disseminated to the public.

“We recently had a couple of burglaries and there were these rumors going around that we were having a crime spree in Peters,” he said. “Once I started getting people to take a look at the crime map and see what the actual statistics were, that kind of settled things down.”

The police department partnered with LexisNexis Risk Solutions to launch the map. LexisNexis provides community crime map technology for free to any municipality that requests it, so there is no charge for residents to use it.

Photo by Tony Webster via Creative Commons