It’s so easy to complain about the variety of web interfaces that we deal with every day. It’s even more entertaining to complain about the ones that hold some useful information but are incredibly bad presenting that information. I forgot about one of the best–worst?–examples of this.
Behold the wonder that is the Baltimore City Police Department’s Online Crime Tracking Tool.
Getting data from this site is nothing if not an exercise in a nuisance. You can only access the last ninety days of information. Furthermore, it defaults to displaying a map of crimes committed in a region, but it does not allow you the ability to download all of the data into an easily importable format. Another limitation of this tool is that you can only select one police district at a time in one neighborhood.
I could see if there was a reason for this interface to be as bad as it is, but this interface is woefully inadequate in 2007. It would be great if I could run a SQL query asking for output on multiple neighborhoods and districts that would make up certain neighborhoods as we know them. Additionally, it might not be a bad idea for the BCPD to actually give this little server a name as opposed to exposing its IP address for the unwashed Internet masses to potentially hack.
I now remember why I easily forgot about this website. Valuable information is once again obscured by an incredibly bad interface. Job well done!
{ 26 } Comments
I so completely agree and commented on it a while back on my blog. It isn't just the bad UI but the interface actually seems to actively prevent you from scripting some way to mine the site for data for use with something like Google Maps.
I wouldn't be too surprised if the BCPD likes that the interface is hard to use so people can't keep too close a tab on crime.
I so completely agree and commented on it a while back on my blog. It isn’t just the bad UI but the interface actually seems to actively prevent you from scripting some way to mine the site for data for use with something like Google Maps.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if the BCPD likes that the interface is hard to use so people can’t keep too close a tab on crime.
Not only does it only allow access to the last 90 days, that 90 days ends about 2 weeks before the present day, and you can only see 14 days of it at a time. The dropdowns, however, will let you pick whatever window you want, and will then give you an error, which is seriously crappy programming.
Paul and jwer: Something tells me between us and the people we know on the Intertubes we could craft something that would be better programmed, better responding, and altogether easier to use.
Anything has to be better than this old thing. What a PITA to use.
Write your own interface - it's easy enough to do. Hit the page source directly, by going here:
http://141.157.54.34/bpdmaps/police_querytype.a...
Save the source code, put it on your web server, and hack away. The first thing you'll need to do is change all of the relative links to use the full http:// address. Then, by playing with the javascript and input buttons, you can tweak it as necessary. From a quick look at the javascript, you should be able to make it do what you want.
Not only does it only allow access to the last 90 days, that 90 days ends about 2 weeks before the present day, and you can only see 14 days of it at a time. The dropdowns, however, will let you pick whatever window you want, and will then give you an error, which is seriously crappy programming.
Paul and jwer: Something tells me between us and the people we know on the Intertubes we could craft something that would be better programmed, better responding, and altogether easier to use.
Anything has to be better than this old thing. What a PITA to use.
Write your own interface - it’s easy enough to do. Hit the page source directly, by going here:
http://141.157.54.34/bpdmaps/police_querytype.asp?cmd=address
Save the source code, put it on your web server, and hack away. The first thing you’ll need to do is change all of the relative links to use the full http:// address. Then, by playing with the javascript and input buttons, you can tweak it as necessary. From a quick look at the javascript, you should be able to make it do what you want.
Notorious: that page does something nonstandard and IE specific. At least that's my immediate assumption since it refuses to work with Safari, Camino or Firefox on my Mac. So I doubt getting the data would be trivial . I looked at this a while back when I did my google map mash up showing the location of Baltimore City murders (Visualizing Murder Ink for 2006 murders.) Since then the City Paper now includes this as part of Murder Ink.
Have you seen this - http://www.crimebaltimore.com/ ? I heard about it from the Wyman Park Neighbors listserv. Apparently, a Wyman Park resident created it. It's a work in progress. You can sort by address and view more than 14 days at a time, but you can't sort by neighborhood. As it is a Google map, you can zoom in and pan. I don't know how often it is updated or how comprehensive it is, because not all of the crimes shown on the city's map for the recent period show up there.
Regarding the City’s Online Crime Tracking Tool, it could be better, but at least it's something.
Notorious: that page does something nonstandard and IE specific. At least that’s my immediate assumption since it refuses to work with Safari, Camino or Firefox on my Mac. So I doubt getting the data would be trivial . I looked at this a while back when I did my google map mash up showing the location of Baltimore City murders (Visualizing Murder Ink for 2006 murders.) Since then the City Paper now includes this as part of Murder Ink.
Paul: The page does work in Firefox on Windows, but it's display and use of pop-ups was annoying to no end. Additionally, it is our friend, Active Server Pages. It's still worth some hackery, even if I have to learn some Javascript. Hell, I'll donate a subdomain for the work. With the holidays upon us, what better to work on than bettering something.
Danielle: Looks purty and uses GMaps. My issue as before is that I want full access to the data source. I don't care for limiting my queries to certain periods of time. I realize that real-time data is probably a problem, but historical data should be easily accessible. The crime tracking tool might be something, but little has changed on it for some time.
Danielle: that's exactly what the Baltimore City should be showing. Heck I'd settle for a nice text based feed of crime stats so the owner of crimebaltimore.com could feed them into his map
JJT: if you need some server resources let me know. I'm not sure how much time I will have to do anything myself, give some other hobby projects I'm hoping to get done.
Have you seen this - http://www.crimebaltimore.com/ ? I heard about it from the Wyman Park Neighbors listserv. Apparently, a Wyman Park resident created it. It’s a work in progress. You can sort by address and view more than 14 days at a time, but you can’t sort by neighborhood. As it is a Google map, you can zoom in and pan. I don’t know how often it is updated or how comprehensive it is, because not all of the crimes shown on the city’s map for the recent period show up there.
Regarding the City’s Online Crime Tracking Tool, it could be better, but at least it’s something.
That's funny, Paul, I had a harder time with it on IE than Firefox
It might be reacting strangely because of a plug-in or something.
In any case, JavaScript isn't that hard to figure out, but if you have any questions, or want a good resource, let me know. I've foung the O'Reilly book to be pretty useful in this regard.
Paul: The page does work in Firefox on Windows, but it’s display and use of pop-ups was annoying to no end. Additionally, it is our friend, Active Server Pages. It’s still worth some hackery, even if I have to learn some Javascript. Hell, I’ll donate a subdomain for the work. With the holidays upon us, what better to work on than bettering something.
Danielle: Looks purty and uses GMaps. My issue as before is that I want full access to the data source. I don’t care for limiting my queries to certain periods of time. I realize that real-time data is probably a problem, but historical data should be easily accessible. The crime tracking tool might be something, but little has changed on it for some time.
Danielle: that’s exactly what the Baltimore City should be showing. Heck I’d settle for a nice text based feed of crime stats so the owner of crimebaltimore.com could feed them into his map
JJT: if you need some server resources let me know. I’m not sure how much time I will have to do anything myself, give some other hobby projects I’m hoping to get done.
That’s funny, Paul, I had a harder time with it on IE than Firefox
It might be reacting strangely because of a plug-in or something.
In any case, JavaScript isn’t that hard to figure out, but if you have any questions, or want a good resource, let me know. I’ve foung the O’Reilly book to be pretty useful in this regard.
I was able to use the BCPD site in Firefox, but it crashed IE 7 every time. Nothing short of a pain in the butt, frankly, and I can't believe the police department can't come up with something better.
I was able to use the BCPD site in Firefox, but it crashed IE 7 every time. Nothing short of a pain in the butt, frankly, and I can’t believe the police department can’t come up with something better.
Carol: I think that there are powers and interests inside both the police department and City Hall that benefit from making crime data difficult to obtain, especially by the residents.
Carol: I think that there are powers and interests inside both the police department and City Hall that benefit from making crime data difficult to obtain, especially by the residents.
Paul, I agree. Especially when you consider the number of “investors” (and I do indeed use that term with scorn…) who want to turn a neighborhood (like Pigtown) into “the next Canton”. I wish it was as easy as blaming it on City Hall and the police, I really do.
Paul, I agree. Especially when you consider the number of “investors” (and I do indeed use that term with scorn…) who want to turn a neighborhood (like Pigtown) into “the next Canton”. I wish it was as easy as blaming it on City Hall and the police, I really do.
I'm glad to see this dialog. I created crimebaltimore.com because I wanted something easy to use. We are still in the early stages of the project, and I welcome any suggestions. We are currently updating this weekly.
I’m glad to see this dialog. I created crimebaltimore.com because I wanted something easy to use. We are still in the early stages of the project, and I welcome any suggestions. We are currently updating this weekly.
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