[Scan-DC] Baltimore Man Uses Scanners to Map Crimes for TV News/iPhones

[Alan Henney]

Forbes

March 29, 2010

Data-Mapping Crimes

BYLINE: Dirk Smillie

SECTION: MARKETING; Pg. 56 Vol. 185 No. 4

LENGTH: 720 words

HIGHLIGHT: Colin Drane wants to be the kingpin of criminal data.

Colin Drane recalls a crime spree that unfolded near his home in Baltimore a few years ago just as scrap metal prices were on the rise: Copper downspouts were disappearing. He reasoned that if his neighbors could see a heat map denoting where the gutter bandits were operating, preventive action could be taken. Drane awoke one morning with the idea of using his car's global positioning system as a model--until he discovered that it, too, had been stolen.

Since then Drane, an infomercial marketer and inventor of products like the Trunkanizer (organizes groceries in your trunk) and the Invisilift (enhances a woman's bustline), is pitching a data-serving invention: SpotCrime. 

The venture, which he launched with $800,000 of his own money, feeds crime data to the Web sites of 90 television news stations in the U.S., Canada and U.K. The digital streams originate from Drane's Baltimore office, where 5 full-time staffers and another 25 freelancers pull the information together. They get their crime intelligence by reading news accounts and police blotters and by monitoring police scanner traffic.

When a crime report comes in, the scene is assigned a longitude and latitude. It's then plotted on a virtual pushpin map. The information is distributed in real time to news sites and via RSS feeds to SpotCrime Twitter and Facebook pages. The data can also be viewed on iPhone apps Drane has created for the cities of New York, London, San Francisco and Baltimore.

SpotCrime staffers plot the locations of 400,000 crimes a month, overlaying street maps with an assortment of eight icons. Handcuffs mean criminal mischief; a little blue man is a theft; a clenched fist is an assault. In Manhattan recently a clenched fist in the Flatiron district meant that "three men were charged with beating a man who spent too long in the men's room of a bagel shop." A blue man on a corner indicated that "a Playboy model's $1,800 bunny outfit was stolen as she shopped in a trendy Greenwich Village store."

Getting an early fix on where robberies and shootings occur may let people discover crime hot spots before they boil over, says Drane. When a crime happens close to home, SpotCrime will send you an e-mail alert. "If you shorten the feedback loop between the moment a crime occurs and the point you become aware of it, you make communities safer," he says.

Police departments have been digitally mapping crime for 20 years. What's different now is that more departments are releasing their data for free. That, in turn, has set off a race among companies like SpotCrime to turn crime data into mash-ups of maps and analytics, producing charts and graphs in Web-friendly formats.

Two other players in this game: CrimeReports.com, now working with 500 police departments nationwide, and the Omega Group's Crimemapping.com, which partners with about 50 law enforcement agencies. Drane's rivals charge police departments for repackaging and transmitting data. Crimemapping makes $100 to $300 a month per customer. It's also scoring venture capital. CrimeReports recently raised $7 million from Austin Ventures.

SpotCrime splits sales revenues from advertisers like Alarmco and Advance Security Concepts, which buy space near the SpotCrime widget. John Conway, creative services director at WRAL in Raleigh, N.C., signed with SpotCrime in July to track local mayhem with the station's Web site. The links give the station a "nice bounce in traffic," he says; some 2,000 WRAL users have signed up for e-mail alerts on crime in their neighborhoods. The bulletins are sponsored by BackgroundChecks.com. An ad at the bottom of the message asks: "Does your date have a criminal past?" Since January SpotCrime has added 40 stations and signed deals with Newport Television, owner of stations in 22 markets, and Fisher Communications, with 28 television and radio stations. Drane won't reveal revenues but says he expects SpotCrime to edge into the black next year. Drane just rolled out a national iPhone app that will pick up crime feeds in any city. He'll be competing with local governments. Some police departments are running crime maps on their home pages. Dozens funnel crime news into Twitter feeds. Law enforcement agencies have even launched their own online crime channel: Blutube.com. Special Offer: Free Trial Issue of Forbes