June 13, 2008Crime data updated: 200 missing Roanoke County offenses addedIf you live in Roanoke County and you've been checking our Roanoke Valley crime data map and search for crime in your area, you might want to look again. Working with the Roanoke County Police, we discovered that the crime data in our database did not include about 200 offenses reported between December 30, 2007 and June 7, 2008. My source for the county's crime data is a weekly report of serious violent and property crime the department publishes on the web. Since the police began posting it weekly at the beginning of the year, it went up on Tuesday afternoon and covered offenses from the previous week. What was invisible in the report is that some offenses that happen in that week aren't included because, for a variety of reasons, the reports aren't always filed in the same week. Sometimes, for example, a supervisor might kick a report back to an officer for revisions, causing a delay in the report's completion. We compared the offenses in my database with those the department could find in its, and found I was lacking something like 40 percent of them. The department graciously agreed to provide me with a complete listing so I could complete our database, which I did this morning. That brings the total number of offenses in the database for Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem to over 1,300. Going forward, the police will now post their report on Thursday instead of Tuesday to allow time for more delayed reports to get into the system and be included. In addition, I will periodically ask them the run a query to catch offenses that slipped through the regular reports. So, whatever gets missed will be caught eventually. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best we can manage right now within the realities of what it takes for the police to produce these records. And to their great credit, the department and Lt. Chuck Mason have shown great concern for presenting a complete and accurate record in these reports. The long and short of it is, now you know what you've been missing. May 19, 2008Montgomery County crime data now onlineWhen we started the DataSphere, we knew online crime data would be a staple of what we offered. Crime and where it happens are important indicators of quality of life and the level of safety in a community -- not to mention just good ol' nosey stuff people like to know about. We've been offering crime data for months now, and have moved from our first static-but-clickable maps for Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem to searchable databases with mapped results. Now, we're closing in on full crime data coverage for the heart of The Roanoke Times circulation area. Last week, we added data for Radford, and today, data for Montgomery Couny is now online. As always, the offering is only as good as the data we get. We have to start someplace, so there's not a ton of data available, but as time passes, the databases wil become richer and more informative. The Montgomery County map -- built and maintained by Online Production Editor Jim Ellison, who works in our New River Valley bureau -- shows misdemeanors and felonies recorded by the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department. It doesn't include offenses reported to the Christiansburg and Blacksburg police department. We may never have every place covered, but this is a pretty darn good start. It's valuable information which, if you pay attention to it, can help you live your life in the best and safest way. Check it out, and as always, let us know what you think. May 15, 2008Crime data updates, and introducing data for the New River ValleyOur Roanoke Valley crime database got its weekly infusion of new data today, as did the Salem felony offenses database. Dig in. And, if you live in the New River Valley, we now have something closer to home for you. Thanks to Jim Ellison, online production editor in our New River Valley bureau, you can now search a crime database and map for Radford. Jim says a separate map for the rest of Montgomery County should be up in the next few days. So if you live in the NRV, thank Jim, and thank local law enforcement for making the data available. April 30, 2008Updates! Crime and Roanoke City Council campaign finance dataOk, there's probably a joke in there about the overlap between crime and campaign finance data. I'll leave that to you, gentle reader. Feel free to offer your jokes in a comment on this entry. In the meantime, we happily report that our Roanoke Valley and Salem crime maps are once again updated through the most recent weekend's offenses. And our database of donations over $100 to Roanoke City Council and mayoral candidates for 2006 and the current campaign is up to date through reports filed by the 10 candidates on Monday, April 28. That's a darn quick turnaround that allows you to see who is financing these campaigns within days of when the checks were written in some cases. In all, 76 new itemized contributions were added. (Donations under $100 aren't itemized.) Again, many thanks to our friends and colleages at the Virginia Public Access Project, who turned the paper reports filed in Roanoke into the electronic data we offer you in the DataSphere. VPAP, in case you don't know by now, offers online searching of an extensive database of statewide campaign contributions. (The non-profit also happens to be lead by a former Roanoke Times reporter, David Poole, whose name still causes a few office holders around here to grit their teeth.) April 24, 2008Roanoke City Council elections: Who's giving money to whom, and what do they get in return?Campaign funding for Roanoke City Council races went through the roof in 2006. Comparitively, anyway. With the fate of Victory Stadium in the balance, money rolled into the campaigns, and as it turned out, the cash-infused independent "For the City" ticket swept the election. That prompted cries of the seats being bought by Roanoke's well-heeled, especially the Business Leadership Fund, the political action committee of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, which pumped tens of thousands of dollars into the coffers of all three "For the City" candidates -- David Trinkle, Gwen Mason and Alfred Dowe. That election seemed to have changed the game, and brought to local elections, at least in a more significant way, the idea of special interest groups buying influence. It also shined a light on the importance of making more available information on where money to finance political campaigns comes from, even at the local level. You can find that very information for both the 2006 and the current Roanoke City Council elections right now in the DataSphere. Take a look, and see how much the candidates are raising, and from whom. And, just as important, see where in the city is that money coming from, because the addresses of the donors are mapped for you. You can see, for example, that mayoral candidate David Bowers, while he has a hefty warchest with over $15,000 raised, has funded his campaign almost entirely from his own wallet with a personal loan. 
You can also search by donor, and see what kinds of candidates a particular donor tends to support. It's all there, and it's all a matter of public record. Candidates for local office are required to file disclosure forms detailing each contribution with their local voter registrar. The Roanoke Times collects these paper records and, working with the Virginia Public Access Project, converts them to electronic records. Thanks to VPAP for that. VPAP, which maintains a terrific database of statewide campaign finance data, also has information in individual donors, such as their professions, which they add to the data in the public records. So, you tell me, is anyone buying influence in this election? What does it say about our political process, when campaign finance comes from such limited quarters? All those things you hear about special interests funding for in federal and state election campaigns, can they really be problems at the local level, too? April 8, 2008Crime maps updated through the weekend's reportsRight on time, the latest week's worth of crime data arrived from Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem yesterday and today, and it's now available for your perusal in our Roanoke Valley crime data map and search and the more details Salem felony crime data map and search. A hearty thanks to all three police department's for their cooperation in providing the data to the public and to The Roanoke Times. I can tell from tracking traffic on the maps that plenty of you all are finding the new maps and aren't spending time looking for the old ones. Still, I haven't heard from you about what you think of the maps and available data. The invitation still stands: comment here, email me, or give me holler at 540.981.3331. April 3, 2008New crime mapping: data you can really dig intoSeems like I’ve been promising better crime maps forever. Forever ended this week. The old static maps with only a few weeks of data are gone, replaced by our new and improved crime data map and search. Now, in one place you can see data from Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem. Choose one locality or search all three. Search all serious violent and property offenses, or select just a particular offense. Enter a date range to limit your search. You can even enter a street name to see offenses just on that street (though at this point, because of the limited amount of data available, many street name searches won't find any records). We did lose one aspect of the old maps that I really liked, and that’s the color-coding by offense type. However, the web service that we’re using to publish our databases and maps now, Capio Bridge, is promising an upgrade to their map mash-up programming this month that will allow us to add the color-coding again. Typically, I'll be updating the database weekly, usually on Tuesday. In addition, we still have a separate Salem crime data map and search. The Salem crime report we receive by email isn’t limited to serious violent and property crimes. It’s a complete list of reported felonies, large and small and of all varieties. We just didn’t want to throw that detail away. So, if you want even more data on Salem crime, check out the Salem-specific map to see everything from shoplifting and forgery to parole violations and perjury. And, as always, tell me what you think. I consider these changes a terrific improvement, but that’s not to say we can’t do even better. Is any part of the search confusing? Something else you’d like to see? So comment here, email me, call me (540.981.3331). Heck, send smoke signals. I’ll be watching the horizon. March 18, 2008I could have used this when my Dad needed a place to goThat Dad was having a heart attack, well, that was not really a shock. He was 81, and had averaged one every ten years or so since I was in college. The shock was that, even with a pacemaker to keep his ticker ticking, his life as an independent man was over. His health was disintegrating, and the heart attack had triggered a landslide decline in his cognitive ability. He was very suddenly a dementia patient, too. All at once it seemed, he had to leave the VA Medical Center in Salem, but he couldn’t go home. To our great relief, social workers at the VA excel at getting patients like Dad placed in nursing care. Though the first place he landed was a nightmare, and he returned to the hospital within a week, the second time he was released he wound up at the Virginia Veterans Care Center next to the VA. To his family's comfort, that became his home for the rest of his days. Everything worked out as well as it could for Dad, who died in November. But looking back, I wonder, what if we’d had to go into the marketplace for nursing care on our own? I wouldn’t have known where to start except the yellow pages, and they don’t give you much but boasts and phone numbers. I hope you never find yourself in the position my siblings and I were in last year, but if you do, you now have a place to start your search for senior care resources. Continue reading "I could have used this when my Dad needed a place to go" » March 17, 2008Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem crime maps updatedIs thing on? You might have wondered. It's been quiet in the DataBlog lately. But rest assured, your friendly data delivery editor has not abandoned you with your thirst for the maps, graphs, columns and rows. In fact, just this morning, I updated our crime report maps for Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem. That took all of an hour. So where the @#$@! have I been? Working hard for you, gentle reader. For the last several days, I've been chugging along learning some new tricks for delivering data. The Roanoke Times recently signed up for a new service called Caspio Bridge. Without boring you with the technical stuff -- I hope -- I'll just say that Caspio is a kind of online tool box that let's a not-so-geeky, retro-fitted writer like me put databases on the Web. What does this mean for you, you ask? Continue reading "Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem crime maps updated" » February 21, 2008Salem crime map there for the clicking
Many thanks to the Salem Police Department who three weeks ago, in response to community and press interest, began releasing a felony crime report with addresses down to the block number, which is good enough to map. So, we now have mapped crime from the entire core of the Roanoke Valley, but, as the consumer, you're not getting a full apples-to-apples to comparison. That's because Salem's report includes all felonies, where the Roanoke and Roanoke County reports cover Part I crimes as defined for FBI uniform crime reporting. That's basically major violent and property crimes. Salem's report includes all that, plus drug offenses and a range of other things like fraud, bad checks, eluding police and on and on. February 19, 2008Homicide victims: A picture's worth a thousand columns and rows
We can't always obtain images of victims, though we always try. Sometimes family members are hard to locate, or just don't care to share. We do our best to avoid reducing victims to names on a list, to remind readers they are human. 
It's in the same spirit that I'm adding these images to the map. Data can seem pretty cold and not very human or personal. I hope these pictures make a difference. Take a look, most especially if you've looked before. When you click on those markers, and what pops up is not only text with dates, but the face of a smiling young mother or proud deputy sheriff, it gets to you in a different way. At least it does me. February 18, 2008Two more slayings in the valley this weekendThe Roanoke Valley saw two homicides this weekend, and both are now documented in an updated version of the Roanoke Valley homicides map in the DataSphere. This somewhat forgotten map -- one of the first I posted in the DataSphere -- gives the name of the victim, the manner of death, the date, time and location of the homicide, and the status of the case. These are the first two additions in 2008, and in fact the first two since November, if I'm not mistaken. (You might wonder about the hit-and-run death of runner Thomas Farrell last month, but police have not officially called that a homicide yet.) Homicides are one of those crimes that just happen, and police will tell you that really they aren't that preventable. The number of murders in Roanoke, where the bulk of them occur, averages around 14 a year, but ranges wildly from year to year. Some years we'll have four or five, while other years we'll hit 20. So check out the map, and as always, tell me what you see. February 12, 2008City and county crime maps updatedJust finished the weekly update of the Roanoke and Roanoke County crime maps, and this is actually a small milestone. For the first time, the two maps have offenses from exactly the same time period. So, for the first time you can eyeball the maps and see what the differences are crime-wise between one locality and the other. The maps can give you a quick idea of where the most crime is, and the colors give you an idea of the quality of it, but the maps won't count for you, so I will. Roanoke County had a total of 83 offenses in the period, including six aggravated assaults, one forcible rape, 15 burglaries, 56 larcenies, three motor vehicle thefts and two robberies. Roanoke had a total of 155 offenses in the period, including 15 aggravated assaults, two arsons, 84 burglaries, 25 motor vehicle thefts and 29 robberies. As you look at these maps, what do you see beyond the obvious? What observations do you make, beyond whether you live in a rough or safe neighborhood? Is there a story we're missing here at the paper? Pop me a line and let me know, either with a comment here or an email. January 29, 2008More crime map updatesI guess it's all I talk about anymore, crime, but it is kind of the hot new item in the DataSphere. Anyway, I updated both the Roanoke and the Roanoke County crime maps today. The city one now runs through January 26, while the county is up to date through January 19. January 28, 2008"Maps give clear view of neighborhood crime"That's the headline from my latest DataSphere column in Sunday's paper. Just thought I'd put up a link here for you folks who don't get the print edition. This month's column is basically the exposition of some thoughts you may have already read in this forum, plus some interesting back story on the city quadrants issue. And keep your eyes open for some new additions to the DataSphere, hopefully this week. We've got city parking ticket data still in the works, and I also picked up data on student loan default rates for over 5,000 colleges, plus some foreign universities. January 25, 2008First Roanoke City crime map updateThe Roanoke City crime map has its first update, with data through January 19. At the same time, to keep the map from getting too cluttered, I removed the oldest offenses. So, there's now exactly a month's worth of reports mapped. Also, if you want to know what each offense type listed means, you can check out the definitions from the Federal Bureau of Investigations. I wish I had a convenient way to archive these maps, but I don't -- not yet. But we're still plugging towards building a crime mapping site that has a searchable archive. One day, hopefully soon, you'll be able to sort the map by offense, limit it by a date range, or by offenses within a certain distance of an address you enter. For now, we're still on the low-tech end of this high-tech kind of undertaking. You can read more of my thoughts on crime maps in Sunday's paper, by the way. Look for my next DataSphere column in the Virginia section. January 18, 2008Roanoke County crime mapped now, tooOur Roanoke City crime map now has company from Roanoke County. Just this week, the Roanoke County police department began posting weekly crime reports that are basically uniform to those posed by the Roanoke City Police Department that are the basis for the city crime map. So, having figured out the city map, it was easy to duplicate the process for the county data. The county has long published a monthly report of all kinds of offenses on its website, but it wasn't always posted in a timely fashion. The change this week not only offered the possibility of a map, but the chance to be fair to Roanoke. Now you can see the same offenses mapped for both localities and make fair comparisons. Currently, the county map looks somewhat bare compared to the city one, but that's in large part because the county map has only two weeks worth of offenses, compared to five weeks of city data. Valerie, in a comment today, asked how we got this rolling finally. The first part was, the crime data became available on a regular basis in a form we could use. The second part was me finding ways to maximize my minimal know-how for the technical part of this job. In short, I learned how to use a free web-based mapping utility, called mapbuilder.net, to plot large numbers of addresses simultaneously. That allowed for a level of efficiency in building these maps that made doing them make sense. Really, it's not that hard. If a thick-headed, retro-fitted newspaper man like me can figure out, it must be easy. January 17, 2008Roanoke crime map now availableIt took a while, and what we've got is still a pretty simple product, but we're at last mapping crime data in the DataSphere. Yesterday I put up a map of Part I offenses reported to Roanoke police from December 1 to January 12. I'll update the map every week or two, so that the most current four or five weeks' of offenses are there. I'll also be adding a map for Roanoke County Part I offenses soon, perhaps this week. January 16, 2008Where have you gone, Lee Suggs?Lee Suggs, if you don't know, was a top flight running back at William Fleming High School in Roanoke, then at Virginia Tech, and finally in the NFL, albeit briefly. He's also one of the last football players of note to come out of the Roanoke Valley. Check out the map of The Roanoke Times' sports staff's picks for the top 50 high school football prospects in the state, class of 2008. Naturally, there are more good players out of the heavily populated eastern half of the state. But it's hard to overlook the glaringly vacant space in and around Roanoke. From where I sit, there nearest prospects are a good drive away, in Richlands, Bristol and Lynchburg. Meanwhile, it seems you can't swing a dead cat in Tidewater without hitting a player bound for a top college program. January 14, 2008Graffiti in the DataSphereAnd on Williamson Road and Salem Avenue and Windsor Avenue, and about 100 other places. Roanoke registered 110 graffiti complaints in 2007 and up to January 5 2008. See where they happened on the map just posted in the DataSphere. I was noodling around learning how to flow large numbers of locations and information onto a Google map and needed some test fodder. My boss, Senior Editor for New Channels Dwayne Yancey, suggested the graffiti complaints, for which you can find details in the city's online permit center. It was a good test case, so I decided to go ahead and put it out there for you all to peruse. And within a day or two, look for a similar maps with the most recent month's worth of crime data for Roanoke and Roanoke County. December 19, 2007Multiplying bearsJust a pause to say thanks to those of you who have submitted black bear sightings for our map of bears in unusual places around the region. I think I had five or six on there when I first posted the map in the DataSphere. There are now three times that. Some cool ones came in, too. Jason Ball, who lives in Amherst County not too far from Buena Vista, sent in three sightings, including a regular visitor who fishes in the pond on his property. Bruce Cody told of one invader who left claw marks 9-feet up a tree from trying to reach a bird feeder. Those are just a couple. Many more there of roadside sightings, mama's and babies in transit, and others. So, again, thanks, and keep 'em coming. December 12, 2007Where 315-pound offensive linemen come fromIt's not like you pass them on the street every day, so where do these monsters who play football at Virginia Tech and UVa come from? And who's coming to play next year? Turns out Roanoke Times sports writer Doug Doughty keeps up with this stuff, and thanks to him we now have those answers in the DataSphere. You can search a small database of recruits by both the Hokies and the Cavaliers major football programs, and see the name, position, school, hometown, height and weight of the 28 players committed to Tech and 14 committed to UVa for 2008 (plus one for 2009 at Tech.) You can see the same data displayed on an interactive map, too. Those who pay close attention to college recruiting know that Tech more or less owns Virginia. Look at the map and that fact leaps at you in burgundy and burnt orange. The Wahoos find their players in more far flung places, its plain to see. What other patterns do you see, sports fans? November 30, 2007You like maps. Really. You do.The DataSphere site has been up for about a month and a week so far, and already some patterns for its use are emerging. In the not-so-surprising category, our database of Virginia Tech football under Coach Frank Beamer leads all other sites within the DataSphere, and by a lot. But in the last three weeks, we've begun posting interactive Google-based maps, and they have instantly proved to be a very popular way to "experience" data. There's our homicides map, our map of holiday lights displays, and most recently our map of black bear sightings, which in one day got so many hits it vaulted to third place all time on the list of most popular DataSphere items. Not that I can grant all wishes -- know-how and resources are always an issue, especially for a start-up kind of enterprise like the DataSphere -- but I do wonder: What else would you like to see mapped? November 28, 2007Bears in unlikely placesYou've seen the video, the photographs: bear runs through downtown street, bear wanders into hospital, bear eats out of backyard birdfeeder. It's can't miss stuff for newspapers and TV news. We're suckers for these things. And here we go again. Now in the DataSphere, a map of sightings of black bears in interesting places around the Roanoke and New River valleys, with pictures and video in some instances. There aren't a lot there yet, and that's where you come in, gentle reader. Email me with your sightings, friends. Send the date, time, location and a description of the bear and what it did, and don't forget the pics and vids if you got 'em. I'll stick 'em on the map and we'll all have more fun than a bear dosed up on ketamine. As an aside, here's how this map "happened." A while back, the DataSphere was featured in a story on a prominent online journalism trade magazine site, called Poynter Online. Interviewing our editor, Carole Tarrant, the author asked what was next in the DataSphere. Carole replied, as a joke, that we'd be mapping sightings of black bears. The author took her seriously, and told the world that yours truly would be mapping black bear sightings. Right away, we started seeing hits on the site from people doing Google searches for black bear sightings in Roanoke. Well, we can't let the people down, now can we? November 27, 2007More on GISFew governments in our area don't have a GIS (geographic information system) mapping function on their website these days. But Roanoke Times business writer Jeff Sturgeon just turned me onto a local GIS site that's offers some stuff others don't. The Western Virginia Water Authority has a GIS that will, among other things, show you where buried utility pipes are and the topography of the land. Just another friendly data offering from the DataSphere. November 26, 2007Crime data updatesWhile we still have no comprehensive crime data in the DataSphere, I've been cobbling together what I can from available sources. In the public safety section, We've posted links to crime data online from Roanoke County, Vinton, Montgomery County, Blacksburg and Botetourt County. The presentation and quality varies. Vinton's data is mapped, while Blacksburg's is searchable. The rest are static offerings you have to scroll through, though they go back as much as two or three years or more. Noteworthy for its absence is Roanoke City. The Roanoke Police Department offered offense reports on its crime analysis page until last week. The department's education information specialist, Aisha Johnson, said she took the data tables down while she revises the page. She could be done by the end of this week, she said. More on that when it's available. Meanwhile, I've updated our homicide map to include homicides in the counties and cities surrounding Roanoke over the last two years. Altogether, 24 homicides are mapped. November 12, 2007Happy National GIS Day!Yeah, I know. Pretty geeky. I didn't know there was such a thing as National GIS Day until a news release from Roanoke City landed in my in box. It's part of the National Geographic Society's Geography Awareness Week to promote geographic literacy. The city and the Western Virginia Water Authority are offering a GIS seminar with demonstrations today from 10 a.m. until noon today in the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building. (Sorry for the late notice.) What's GIS? It stands for geographic information system. Basically, it's a way to access information using a map as the basis for it. What it means for you is, lots of good stuff you need to know about your locality (or one you might move to) is available now on almost every local government website. At least around here. You can see real estate sales info, tax assessments, where schools are, where fire hydrants are, where the flood plain is, and on and on and on. So, in honor of National GIS Day, I'm posting links to area government GIS sites in the real estate section of the DataSphere. You'll see some are better than others. Roanoke's has the most to offer. Roanoke County's offers surprisingly little by comparison, but it's still there for you. Others fall in between. So, dive in, click around the map and see what GIS can do for you. November 8, 2007How much space do you need?Parking space, that is. I just posted an interactive map of off-street parking lots in downtown Roanoke in the DataSphere. There are 30 of these suckers with, get this, over 6,500 spaces available. Four thousand are in city-owned lots and garages alone. Of course, you have to pay, but for all the people who seem to think parking is too much of a hassle to come downtown, lack of a place to leave your jalopy ain't the issue. What is it about Roanokers that so many of us must park on the street directly in front of where we're headed, and do it for free, or we'd just rather not go? What gives? Are we just not cosmopolitan enough? And if we're too provincial to want to pay to park, will we be sophistocated enough to bother with the new art museum? |
.....Advertisement.....
|
...Advertisement...
...Advertisement...
