Stay aware in your community with online crime reports
Living in fear is not a healthy lifestyle, no matter what your surroundings. Usually, fear is associated with the unknown. Staying informed of events in your community can help you live a more relaxed life and make better choices that will keep you and your family safe. CrimeReports.com is one way to stay on top of what’s going on around you.The CrimeReports service was founded by Greg Whisenant, who previously founded Wasatch Solutions, dealing in networking services and software development. CrimeReports.com is a free service partnered with over 700 law enforcement agencies in North America. These agencies provide information on trends and recent crimes in the community, which CrimeReports.com users can access through an interactive “crime map” or e-mail crime alerts.CrimeReports.com is offered for free to users, but your local law enforcement agency must be partnered with the site to receive data. Citizens can contact their local agency to request them to join. One factor that might affect their decision is the possibility of actually reducing crimesome people have claimed that keeping citizens more informed about criminal activity in the community can inspire more effective crime prevention measures, whether at home or in the office.The crimes listed on the site have only been submitted by law enforcement professionalsusers cannot submit or remove crimes. There are, however, websites with user-submitted crime reports. One such site is SpotCrime.com, although the data also comes from law enforcement agencies and news reports. Submitting a crime requires the user to make an account. On the SpotCrime blog, users can see areas of high crime in recent weeks. MyLocalCrime.com is a crime report aggregator run by SpotCrime that is even easier to view and understand.These sites are not designed to make you afraid to go outside. Instead, they can help to show you recent patterns in local criminal activity. You may even find that there haven’t been any incidents in recent months. Regardless, there are some security tips you should always follow, such as never leaving your doors unlocked when you leave the house, making sure that young children are accompanied during all trips, keeping your windows secured, and always leaving some lights on when you leave the house, for starters. For more security tips, keep reading CrimeWaveMagazine, or visit the website of the National Crime Prevention Council. Just a few minutes of preparation can make a huge difference when it comes to keeping your family, your home, and your belongings safe and secure.