Anyone can now find out the type, rate and ranking of crimes reported in specific state legislative House and Senate districts, thanks to a new online tool created by the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce that was unveiled Wednesday.
To access CrimeStatsNM.org users must set up a free account. Then, by navigating through the website, people can see the reported rate and ranking of violent crime and property crime per 1,000 people, and their combined rate and ranking in specific legislative districts.
Rates and rankings of drug and theft crimes are also listed, but do not factor into the combined rate and rankings, and are instead based on raw data from third-party datasets, explained Chris Schroeder, CEO of Real Time Solutions, which was commissioned by the Hispano Chamber to create the platform.
In a separate graphic, the crimes in the four categories are color-coded for each House and Senate district to signify their grade: red, critical; orange, severe; yellow, moderate; light green, fair; and dark green, good.
A primary purpose of the chamber’s anti-crime initiative was to give state legislators up-to-date statistics for crimes in their respective districts, and for their constituents to be able to click a “take action” button on the web page, sending an email directly to their representative or senator and asking them to support various pieces of legislation to reduce crime, said chamber president Ernie C’de Baca.
“I think it’s going to be a good tool for New Mexicans to be able to work with our legislative group to get some of these laws passed,” said chamber member Steven B. Chavez, who headed up the anti-crime initiative. “Hopefully, law enforcement gets what they need, and we can change crime here or reduce it, and move the needle.”
Other data layers will be added to the website in the future, C’de Baca said.
The data highlighted on CrimeStatsNM.org comes from reporting law enforcement agencies, Crimegrade.org and the U.S. Census Bureau.
