Dover residents now have a new tool to see what crimes are happening in their neighborhoods, an Online Crime Map.
The Dover Police Department has partnered with CrimeMapping.com to produce the map that displays crime data across the City.
“And what they do is, they can access all of our reporting system software and it updates the crime map almost in “real” time to provide the citizens of Dover and in the Kent County area with an idea of what’s going on in their neighborhoods or in their workplace, their normal work travel routes and things of that nature,” said Dover Police Department Spokesman, Cpl. Mark Hoffman.
Hoffman calls the crime map very user-friendly. He says you can head to the Dover Police site and look at current crime activity on the map - or look at activity over certain periods of time.
You can create personalized alerts - including alerts that track crime and/or sex offender movement in a specific area.
Hoffman says he hopes the map will do more than just give residents information on crime.
“Obviously the better informed citizens we have, the safer they’re going to be. But also, they can give us more information on what they may have seen in their neighborhoods as well. So for example, if they notice that there were three cars that were broken into in or near their neighborhood on a certain night, they may have seen somebody that doesn’t live there that was walking around and just seemed suspicious, maybe they can report that and give us some information or smaller details that can help us solve those crimes or even prevent them,” Hoffman said.
Crimemapping.com also has an app you can use to access the Dover data.
You can link to the crime map here.
