The 0800 crime reporting line Crimestoppers and Esri UK, the UK developer of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology, have renewed their partnership.
The organisations first began working together in 2011 when the Esri’s ArcGIS was first installed into the Crimestoppers’ call bureau. The software enabled calls and online information forms to be mapped in relation to where crimes – reported to the anonymous 0800 555 111 telephone number – took place, enabling hot-spot analysis and further evaluation, to help in the fight against crime.
Since then, Esri software has also been used for marketing purposes to boost general crime awareness campaigns, such as the use of an Esri UK story map on the landing page for Crimestoppers’ cannabis cultivation awareness campaign. Used to display historical ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) data of cannabis cultivation in the UK, the map received 17,144 views. A further map was also produced to visually demonstrate the increase in cannabis cultivation intelligence as a result of the campaign.
More recently, the Esri UK staff made a story map of the UK’s most wanted fugitives believed to be hiding in Spain, to support Operation Captura. The story map was published by the Daily Telegraph, receiving more than 9,465 views.
Crimestoppers also used Esri UK’s software to showcase Giving Tuesday, an international day of giving. Crimestoppers marked it through the launch of the #BeACrimestopper project – an appeal via Twitter feed highlighting the Charity’s impact through regular tweeting. Tweets were posted between 8am and 8pm on Tuesday, December 2, 2014, and the Esri UK map displayed the areas of the country from where calls were received, resulting in 3500 total click-throughs.
A Crimestoppers ‘Tweetathon’, run in 2013, giving a snapshot of the 1000-plus pieces of information Crimestoppers receives from the public on a daily basis, used an interactive map to identify crime types and locations of information sources at a county level. This campaign was incredibly successful, leading to a UK Social Media Award nomination in October 2014.
Rodger Holden, Director of Business Development at Crimestoppers, said: “Esri UK has become a highly-valued partner in the work that we do to raise awareness and tackle crime. Their mapping software has provided us with an important evaluation tool, thereby improving the quality of the quantitative data that we are now able to produce in addition to the qualitative data that we were already skilled in processing. All this serves to build a more complete picture for law enforcers in tackling crimes.”
And Adrian Friend, Head of Defence, National Security and Public Safety for Esri UK, said: “A geo-spatial approach to crime detection plays a vital role in helping to identify patterns of crime and, ultimately, help to apprehend criminals. We are proud to continue our relationship with Crimestoppers and its partners, in their fight against crime.”
