Regina Police Service releases new crime map

Regina police have released a new crime map to help give people an idea of where crime is happening in the city.

The Community Crime Map will be updated every 24 hours with the latest crimes that have taken place in the community.

The map will be show incidents including assaults, break-and-enters, impaired drivers, mischief, criminal traffic violations and robberies.

Regina Police Service Chief Evan Bray thinks this will be a useful tool for the people of Regina.

“I think this new interactive crime map gives us an idea of what types of crimes are happening and how prevalent they are in certain areas of the city,” he said Tuesday after a meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners.

“That’s often a question we get from city council and citizens who want to understand if it’s happening in their neighbourhood. I think it gives deeper context on those crime stats we report on a monthly basis.”

The new Community Crime Map replaces an old heatmap that used to be available for public use.

While the heatmap was useful, the new map allows for specific crime-related information to be released to the public.

That includes events like vehicles being broken into or break-and-enters.

However, Bray says certain serious crimes won’t be posted in order to protect those impacted.

“We’re being careful when it comes to serious crimes like a sexual assault, homicide, even things like overdoses and sudden deaths. We aren’t reporting that on the crime map for privacy purposes,” he explained.

Bray added the exact location of crimes also won’t be revealed in order to keep those victims protected.

“Even though it doesn’t put the dot on the actual house or location it happened, in some areas it could be very identifying if there’s been one sexual assault on a remote bay in the city. People (might) know what day a police car was at a house,” he said.

“We want to be very careful about that. It’s about finding that balance between protecting people’s privacy and information and providing information to the city so they can digest that and give themselves some tools to keep themselves from victimization.”

Regina police say the new tool cost $70,000. the technology to create it was purchased in 2019.