Asheville’s CrimeMapper expands to include Buncombe crime data

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

1

Today at GIS Day over at AB-Tech, I ran into the city of Asheville’s technical whiz Jason Mann, one of the key guys behind the city of Asheville’s CrimeMapper. The online application allows any user to look up or search out local crime data geographically. So if want to know what crime action is happening in your neighborhood, all you have to do it type in an address and you’ve got it. The application pulls data each night from the computer system that police use to keep track of criminals. That database is known as CJIS, or the Criminal Justice Information System.

But now CrimeMapper is pulling in data from the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department. That means anyone in the county can now use CrimeMapper to look up crime reports and tie it to geography. Pretty cool stuff.