The system is set up through crimemapping.com, a national site that shows where and when crimes have taken place. Once committed, the crimes take about a week to show up in the system, Murphy said.

Rather than depending on the system to show immediate crimes, the system can be used to look at crime trends in specific areas.

“Officers check it because they go to a lot of neighborhood watch meetings, and people will always ask what is going on around their house,” Murphy said. “So what the officer will usually do, is when they go to a meeting, they’ll get a crime mapping report for their neighborhood.”

ELPD Sgt. James Campbell has been using the crime mapping system for many of the neighborhood watch meetings, which now are structured around the system.

“You get to the meetings and they have questions about activity in the neighborhood and it’s good to be able to put up the site and see what’s been going on,” Campbell said. “Sometimes there are a lot of rumors and we use it to dispel rumors.”

Many officers will work long shifts and then have multiple days off, Murphy said. Because of this, information might not get passed along between those shifts and they won’t have information on certain crimes. With the crime mapping system, Murphy said they are able to just look up the crimes on the site and have answers for residents immediately.

Another use for the crime mapping system is for people moving into East Lansing who are curious about what areas are safe and what crime looks like in surrounding cities, Murphy said.

Additionally, parents can look at crime rates if they’re looking to rent houses for students that are moving into town.

Education sophomore Alexa Meier didn’t think she would utilize the service, but sees the merit.
“I know that my mom would (use it),” Meier said. “If she knew about it, she probably would check it out every single day and let me know.”