Ottawa police launch interactive map for crime statistics

Locations are pinpointed to the nearest roads and intersections to protect privacy.

Published Nov 15, 2023 • Last updated 6 hours ago • 1 minute read

The Ottawa Police Service Crime Map (Year-to-Date) is an interactive mapping tool that allows users to filter and query selected crime types by neighbourhood, police division, and other data attributes, according to the police service. Photo by Ottawa Police Service /Screenshot

Ottawa police have launched new data visualization tools, with a map showing the location of select crimes throughout the city.

The interactive map shows crimes from the current year up to the previous day, with locations pinpointed to the nearest roads and intersections to protect privacy.

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“The crime dataset can be reviewed and discussed in coordinated crime prevention initiatives and to improve community awareness and personal safety,” the map’s disclaimer reads.

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The crime map shows reported homicides, attempted murder, assault, criminal harassment, uttering threats, harassment, robbery, break and enter, vehicle theft, theft under $5,000 and theft over $5,000, as well as arson and mischief.

For example, the map shows a string of thefts occurred along Bank Street between Slater and McLeod streets between Nov. 7 and 11.

As of Wednesday, there had been 261 reported instances of theft under $5,000 in Ottawa this year, the map showed, making up the largest percentage of 545 crimes recorded on the map over the previous week. Mischief accounted for 67 crimes, and there were 50 reports of vehicle theft.

The Ottawa Police Service also launched a tracker for overdose calls from 2018 to 2022, with that data showing a significant increase. Between 2018 and 2021, the rate of overdoses doubled. Since 2018, police received 2,582 overdose calls, 666 of them in 2022. Police have administered Narcan, or naloxone, a drug that can reverse overdoses, 185 times since 2021.

Meanwhile, police received 71 reports of hate crimes in 2015, but that number increased by more than 300 per cent for 2022, when there were 317.