Monthly Crime Reporting in Vancouver Neighbourhoods, 2002 - 2010

The good news is that over the past 8 1/2 years while monthly reporting of some types of crimes have remained relatively stable, many have been on the decline.

Highlights:

Non-Fatal Traffic Accidents - declining since February 2006
Motor Vehicle Theft - declining since October 2007
Break and Enters - declining since February 2008
Prostitution - declining since March 2009
Offensive Weapons - declining slightly since September 2009
Thefts over/under $5,000 - declining since September 2007, but appear to be on the rise since April 2010

Vancouver's Burrard Bridge Bike Lane - Competing for Space

If you drive a car in Vancouver, you complain about the traffic.  If you drive downtown, you have a lot to complain about.  Traffic is frequently back to back and finding parking is a chronic frustration.  It's a big city.  That's big city life.  And in Vancouver, it's the price we pay for not having ugly (both aesthetically and environmentally) freeways.

Another Perspective on Crime in Vancouver Neighbourhoods

I've spent this past week working on mapping the VPD crime stats to Vancouver neighbourhoods.  It wasn't as easy as you'd think.  I would have liked to have used a map with the neighbourhoods outlined, however, importing the  Google city neighbourhood boundary map provided through Vancouver's Open Data Catalogue into Tableau Public is beyond me at this time and I'm not entirely sure it's possible in this version of Tableau.  Regardless, learning the Google Map Api and how to integrate it with Tableau will have to wait.

Crime in Vancouver Neighbourhoods 2002 - 2009

Here's an example of reporting that is perfect for publishing with Tableau Public.  The Vancouver Police Department publishes crime statistics on their web-site in numerous pdf files which are difficult to compare without printing off reams of paper.  Each of these reports provides a small part of a much bigger picture.  Tableau allows us to combine the results by neighbourhood and year, and compare neighbourhood crime trends.  The reader can then choose which year, type of crime, or neighbourhood they want to view or compare.