Entrepreneur Closes The Door On Crime

A few years ago Greg Whisenant unknowingly opened the door to his apartment building for a criminal, resulting in several of his neighbors being robbed, reports ABC News. Inspired by his mistake, Greg created an information sharing website for local police that has since turned into one of the fastest growing data mapping services in the US.

“I’d never been a crime activist or particularly concerned about my personal safety,” said the founder of CrimeReports.com http://www.crimereports.com, who was working as a Washington lobbyist when he began attending community policing meetings in the D.C. suburb of Arlington, Virginia. “But I raised my hand, everybody clapped, and I was off the races.”

The early CrimeReports web site, which allowed police departments to register for free, essentially served as an elaborate email system, creating a conduit for municipalities to send localized alerts to members of the general public who signed up.

Today CrimeReports provides comprehensive local crime-mapping data to some 750 police departments, including cities such as San Francisco and Boston, and the entire states of Maryland and Utah.

Depending on their size, clients pay between $100 to $200 a month for data on homicides, break-ins, auto thefts and other crimes occurring in their service areas. The company also has a handy iPhone application, and offers police internal analytics for an additional monthly fee of $300 to $1,000.

Screenshot from CrimeReports

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