Murder mapping

Boston Police Fire 911 Events combines Google Maps with police reports to show crime and fires in the city.

At least, in theory. In practice, they're only listing murders and serious A&Bs (like stabbings), because the data come from Boston PD press releases, which, no surprise, only highlight big cases.

Via Ralph.

Now, what would be cool would be if, oh, a newspaper (I can think of two big ones with a Web presence) married this with its article database, so you could not only see where the murders took place, but details on what happened.

But what would be even cooler (i.e., more useful) would be if somebody got the Boston PD's logs and developed a way to track more crimes across the city. The Google Maps API lets you color code its "pushpins," so you could even color-code the markers based on severity (red for murder, yellow for A&B, green for thugs riding clown bikes, say).

Update: Et voila - Boston Crime.