The Austin Police Depart­ment last week announced that it would partner with the national Regional Analysis and Information Data Sharing service to provide Austin residents with a new tool for tracking neighborhood – or citywide – crime. (The new tool can be accessed at www.raidsonline.com.) There’s a lot of data here; how useful it will be is unclear – or, for that matter, how much more useful it will be than other tools already out there, including APD’s Crime Viewer (www.cityofaustin.org/GIS/crimeviewer/CrimeViewer_disclaimer.html) or Krimelabb (www.krimelabb.com), which provides residents a user-friendly way to sort through thousands of APD incident reports.

This article appears in July 8 • 2011.

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