Crime Maps: “What’s Going on in your Neighborhood?”

We have all listened to the news, heard reports of abducted children, raped college students, and robberies, and wondered will I be next?  How safe is the university’s campus?  There are obvious signs that the university has the goal of protecting each one of its students and faculty from potential risks.  For instance, blue lights line the walkways, police are present, escorts are available, and gaurd houses monitor the entrance.  But are these precautions effective? From the google map my group created that visually showed areas of high crime, types of crimes commited, and times of the crimes, we found that despite the high calibar of our campus programs relating to safety, incidences continue to occur.  Unfortunately, a lot of the safety issues are a result of poor decision making on behalf of the students living on campus.  A hot spot for crime on campus is the Stanford circle.  Here the Shuttle runs during Thursday “college night”, Friday, and Saturday evening until the early morning.  This form of transportation is favored by many students and often attracts a large crowd.  The group of students that take advantage of the Shuttle’s services,  however, are usually under the influence.  Therefore, many incidences occur that threaten the level of safety on campus.  This has been noted by the authority figures on campus and threats have been made of getting rid of the Shuttle.  Another significant finding from our data revealed that there was no correlation between time of day and the number of crimes.  This is very surprising.  I would think that night time hours would result in a notable raise in the amount of crimes.  However, one solution to this dilemma may be that the type of crimes that occur at night at different then those during the day.  To analyze this we should have constructed different number of crimes versus time of day for each type of crime.