Interactive police map tracks crimes committed across the Czech Republic

Czech police in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior have presented a new interactive map that charts crimes committed across the Czech Republic. In the online map, members of the public can see the types of crimes recently committed in their neighborhood.

The data includes both felonies and misdemeanors, and is updated through the past month. General details include if the crime committed was violent, and if the suspected perpetrator has been apprehended or is still at large.

For example, we can see that 76 crimes, mostly misdemeanors, were filed within a roughly two-block radius of the Expats.cz offices in October. Near the Florenc metro station, three violent crimes (robberies) were committed last month; the perpetrator has been identified in two of those crimes, while a third is still at large.

"The map is intended for the public, so that people can know for themselves how dangerous the locality they live in is, or whether there is any criminal activity there," Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan states in a press release.

"I know that it is a great tool from my own experience in my home town of Kolín. And I am very happy that other municipalities, including the municipal and city police, consider crime maps to be indispensable and plan to use them in the future."

The online map has been previously available in a beta version, but was fully launched in September after more than a year of testing. Its ultimate aim is to reduce crime through access to data, and serves to provide knowledge both the to public as well as public officials and members of the police.

In addition to the data provided to members of the public in the maps, police investigators have access to another level of tools, including predictive functions that can evaluate the types of crimes committed in an area and identify potential future threats.

"We are repaying an imaginary debt to the public in the form of providing information," adds Martin Vondrášek, Chief of Police of the Czech Republic.

"Public crime maps [...] represent an effective tool in the prevention of crime, and can also be a model for the open approach of state authorities. We aim to cooperate not only with representatives of local governments, but also provide the maximum level of information to anyone who is interested in street safety, or who wants to work with open data."

Along with the Interior Ministry and Police of the Czech Republic, representatives from the Technical University of Ostrava and local authorities assisted in creating the map. Data from Liberec, Kladno, Kolín and Prague 2 was used for testing purposes in its pilot operation.

You can check out the types of crimes recently committed in your neighborhood through this link.