QCIC?

Alright, I've had this idea for sometime now, and need some help making it go. The Orchargenesis of this idea came from two things:

1. The Google Maps API is free, ridiculously flexible, and totally bitchin'.


2. DPS sends out Crime Reports in order to comply with the "Timely Warning" provision of the Clery Act.

Combine these two things and I think students could have a powerful tool for watching and judging their the crime that occurs around the USC campus.

Thugz Manse has (thankfully) been spared any muggings or robberies thus far. I think Kevin getting his side-view mirror crushed off is perhaps the worst crime we've had to endure. And by we, I mean Kevin, and maybe Freddie who helped him glue the mirror back on. I was too busy failing Russian to help.

But I digress. The biggest thing DPS's crime alerts lack is a way to visually track and process the information they present. Yes, I know roughly where Walton Avenue is, but where officially is the 3400 block of Walton Avenue, where at 3:30 AM on February 5^th, this happened:

REPORTED OFFENSE: Two vehicles stopped long side the victim. Approximately 8 male suspects exited, struck him and demanded property. The complainant complied and all suspects fled the area in vehicles.

SUSPECT DESCRIPTION (provided by complainant):
Suspect 1- Described as male Hispanic, 5 feet 8 inches,170 pounds, 18-20 years, wearing over-size white-tee shirt, and baggy black pants.
Suspect 2- Described as a male White.
Suspect 3-8 Described as male Hispanics.

SUSPECT VEHICLE: 1 - 4 door black sedan.
SUSPECT VEHICLE: 2 - 4 door white sedan.

I'm sorry, but that's just kind of ridiculous. A two car job with a gang of 8 dudes robbing one student? That's not how you conduct a mugging, that's how you conduct a heist. The sheer ridiculosity of this event struck me, and I decided to look up exactly where this was, so I would never get caught there with my pants down at 3:30 AM when two cars start to creep up suspiciously. In case you're wondering what this looks like:


I hope pictures have proved my point-- being able to see how near to USC and in around what specific block of student housing this Mad Max-esque robbery happened is far more powerful than just reading a line of text and trying to add yet another pushpin in your mental map of where not to be around USC.

As they are, crime alerts aren't all that useful, but if you track them on a map, they become far more relevant. It's important that information be presented in a useful format, especially when it's something as easy to do as this.

Ideally, we should be able to take the google maps API and connect it to a database containing these crime alerts. Once we have all the crude locations plotted, we can start manipulating the information in other useful ways, such as:

• Sorting by type of crime: Are you more liable to be mugged or assaulted if you walk down this street?
• Sorting by number of suspects: just how many dudes should you be expecting?
• Sorting by time on the daily scale: Is it this road more dangerous at 11 PM or 3 AM?
• Sorting by time on a larger scale: Which days are the worst for crime? Which times of the month? Which months? Which years? Was this area dangerous 2 months ago, but not anymore?
• Physical Descriptions: will the attacker be tall or short? Stout or slim? What will they be wearing?
• Vehicles: Should I watch out for unmarked vans or a beat-up Honda Accord?

And if we're getting ridiculously specific:

• What sort of weapons do criminals carry around here?
• Pictures: Let students upload pictures of the area where it happened-- let people know what it looks like so it is recognizable as they are walking/cycling around it. It may prompt some lucky feelings of deja vu.

All of this would be fantastic for just logging at sorting the crimes-- in addition to the geographical display, a few regular charts may be useful as well. However, if we were to pimp this project all the way out, we could start creating different zones on the map and cataloging them by the crimes that occur. I'd love to test my hypothesis that it's actually more dangerous to live in the student housing immediately off campus where criminal know they can prey on students than to take your chances farther out at a location like Thugz Manse. Perhaps there is a preferred radius, or a few streets combine to form a Bermuda Triangle from which wallets, iPods, and cellphones never return? Is there someway we could get Batman involved? What if we let students plot routes (perhaps with pulldown menus of common off campus housing buildings and on campus locations) and then compute the risks of that route? It's not much but it may be the difference between someone calling campus cruiser and getting home safe, or losing their stuff. Could we make this service accessible through cellphones or other mobile technology? We could make it something people could actually use in their day to day lives as opposed to an internet oddity The safety tips DPS gives out are reasonable, but they seem more like snake oil than an actual cure. Perhaps they would be more useful if students had a better context to actualize them in?

Additionally, we must consider the interplay of the criminal element here: if students start acting smarter and safer, will the criminals move on, or will they become more aggressive? Will they fail to catch on, especially if they are driving in from out of the area?

There's always a mild buzz in the university presses about how USC is at odds with the surrounding community, but then, often it seems like the surrounding community is hatin' on us students instead of just the university. If this thing makes the whole area safer, perhaps more than students will benefit?

Could we export our back-end software and interface to other schools? I can think of a few other campuses where this may be welcomed.

Essentially, I'm just a curious bastard who wants to look at all the information contained in these crime alerts through a number of different lenses. I know the technology exists to do it, and it's only a matter of application, but I really just don't have the time or the expertise to do this all myself.

I don't really know how we could support this project-- perhaps advertisers would pay to sell pepper spray off of our site, or donations could keep us afloat. Maybe we'd get some sort of university backing or a grant, but I wouldn't count on it. Part of me thinks that organizing a website which catalogues just how dangerous the area around USC is might go over like a lead balloon with the university. But then again, they may welcome it as a resource which protects students and gives them a chance to show off how good campus policing is compared to other schools.

Anyway, it's a thought, I'd like to bounce it off of you, and if you have some skills, time, or input to contribute-- well, it's the internet man! You know what to do! Let's rock this, eh?