Reader misses Crime Watch database

I received this question from my blog this week:

I realize you hear this all the time, but what happened to Crime Tracker or Crime Watch?  The last question posted on newsok.com referencing Crime Tracker was from December 2008, so I wanted to check to see if it was still active?  It is truly the best resource when looking to buy a home, because otherwise it is almost impossible to know the presence of crime in neighborhoods.

The customer is correct. I’ve posted on this subject in the past. At the time of that post (Dec. 23, 2008), we had made the Crime Watch page live and available for the public. The page was live for several months, but we decided to remove the page from our navigation a few months ago when we thought it was doing more harm than good.

The data was not updated to our satisfaction. It was out-dated, and we were not able to keep up with every police department in the Oklahoma City metro area to find ways to easily keep the data fresh.

So, since it was old data and not something we were proud of, we removed it from public viewing.

That’s not something we are real happy about. It’s quite disappointing, especially when we become aware that a customer is missing it.

But the facts are simple: