Does EveryBlock Really GET Chicago Crime?
What does the “eulogy” euloigize? “The end of one of his projects”:
Chicagocrime.org site has been serving Chicago residents since May 2005.
Goodbye, farewell, then, the “end” for chicagocrime.org as Holovaty waxes nostalgic? Not quite. It is simply being rolled into Holovaty’s “newest project,” EveryBlock:
All pages will redirect to the appropriate pages on EveryBlock. In many ways, EveryBlock is the next generation of chicagocrime.org. I’ve often described it to people as “chicagocrime.org on steroids — more than just crime, and more than just Chicago.”
BUT, not more nuanced.
Holovaty is confident that “A lot of good has come out of chicagocrime.org”:
At the local level, countless Chicago residents have contacted me to express their thanks for the public service. Community groups have brought print-outs of the site to their police-beat meetings, and passionate citizens have taken the site’s reports to their aldermen to point out troublesome intersections where the city might consider installing brighter street lights.
The ”public service” that chicagocrime.org congratulates itself for can just as easily be considered a public disservice, though, despite all the feel good talk about turnkey Web 2.0. “transparency.”
Holovaty rallies for the power of the “programmer as journalist.” In other words, data is news. Unfortunately for the public the data “serve,” however, data is generally more art than science, regardless of conventional (not so) wisdom.
EveryBlock enables easier public access to public information available to the public, but that does not translate into a more informed public.
Disclaiming usage of EveryBlock is obviously not a priority of the “project; i.e., advising about what can, or can, not be read into the “hard data” presented. Information on the basis of the Chicago “crime” data offered nevertheless suggests many disclaimers to interpretations of the data presented at EveryBlock are warranted:
This data reflects incidents where the police responded and completed case reports. Note that a case report is not necessarily issued every time the police respond to an incident. A report’s “crime type” classification is based upon information known at the time the preliminary investigation was conducted. It may be revised at a later time. The crime classifications have been summarized due to the often lengthy and complex nature of the crimes. These definitions are not verbatim, may not include every element of every offense, and should not be used in a court of law or for legal reference. They are only basic attempts to describe primary classifications.
It is also basic human nature to have confidence in public “statistics” and “official” reports, often OVER confidence. Just ask those alleged “criminals” that are proven innocent after having been presumed guilty via official police reports.
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