The 200,000+ circulation daily newspaper La Vanguardia has gotten into robbery mapping with a Google maps implementation that allows the newspaper’s online users to pinpoint locations where they have seen robberies taking place in Barcelona.
Screenshot from Robbery Maps (robberymaps.com)
The resource has yet to prove widely popular as there are still less than fifty incidents identified. The feature was first added to the site five days ago (May 11th).
Kudos and congratulations to La Vanguardia. The energies and resources of the region’s journalists are required to eradicate the scourge of street crime.
Another online resource entitled “Robbery Maps” displays many thousands of incidents and has been running for over a year. What’s remarkable about Robbery Maps is the number of comments and contributions in Spanish, from concerned locals and domestic victims. This flies in the face of the belief that it’s mostly foreigners or tourists who are targeted in the city.
An example of the content being generated on La Vanguardia’s site includes this, from Aznar: “En Vila Olimpica también hay de tanto en tanto. En las escalera mecánicas uno se pone delante de la víctima y al acabarse la escalera se le cae la cartera y se frena. La víctima choca con él y echa las manos hacia adelante para no caer.”
An example of content from Robbery Maps includes this: “I live just here. In 7 months I’ve been witness of 42 robberies commited by maghreb people. They’re gonna steal your bag or camera in Via Laietana and they’ll use Mercaders St. to run away from you. Be careful.”
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
[...] near the Moog (in the tunnel) and so on. Go on city council, you know the locations, La Vanguardia started publishing the locations this week, and Robbery Maps has been doing it for [...]