Everyblock

I found the guest speaker's presentation this week very interesting. I've actually used the chicagocrime.org web site before to check out the crime in the neighborhood I used to live in. It was a very useful tool, even though the results I found were less than desirable (luckily I moved out of that neighborhood).

The evolution from that site into everyblock.com is very interesting, to say the least. I've subscribed via the RSS feeds and have been keeping up with what's going on in my neighborhood every day since that class. Just today, using everyblock.com, I found out that 2 Hispanic males pulled a gun on a 58 year old woman driving her car and shot out her windows at 8am. Unfortunately they got away, but without this site I probably wouldn't have even known about it. What scares me even more than the fact that it was 3 blocks from my apartment is the fact that it happened 1 block from my girlfriend's apartment. I feel like a parent with as much as I worry about her safety living here.