Ever wonder how much crime is occurring in your neighborhood? Starting this week for Richmond Hill residents, you can now log onto a website that will give you that information and much more.
Richmond Hill Police Chief Billy Reynolds announced Tuesday that the department has collaborated with the website Crime Reports.com to make available a record of all the incidents the RHPD respond to. If you register online, you can also sign up to receive free daily, weekly or monthly email updates on crime reports for whatever area of the city you designate – and for whatever radius you specify.
"Nationwide, there’s been a movement for the public to become more engaged in the type of crime that’s around them," said Ryan Lufkin, Director of Marketing for the site. "It’s really the best way to get timely information out to the public. It’s a way to stay in tune with what’s happening around you. For example, one could log on and see that two of their neighbors got robbed, so they’ll know to be taking more precautions like keeping their house well lit.""It helps us too," Chief Reynolds said. "It gives us a way of mapping criminal activity, which we’ve wanted to do for a while now. I’m hoping it will also help us develop leads for some investigations. For example, if residents in the 200 block of Casey Drive get an email that one of their neighbors was burglarized, they may call us saying they saw something that night."
Reynolds said the volume of incidents they see on the site may surprise some people, but he said "all they have to do is click onto another municipality to see that crime in Richmond Hill is comparatively low."
The site retains incident information within a 30 day span. When you input a particular address, it defaults to part one crimes within that immediate area, which are harsher crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and assault. You then have the option to expand the search or focus in on one particular type of incident, such as property damage or auto accidents.
Graphs and numerous other crime statistics are available on the site as well. Lufkin said the website, which provides services to an agency for $99 a month, is rapidly growing in popularity. He said, in two years, the site has grown from having four agencies to over 500 today. Other Georgia cities that employ CrimeReports.com include Jesup, Athens and Doraville.
Click here to check out the site: http://crimereports.com/map/index/?search=+Richmond%20Hill+GA