The Baltimore Sun city homicide map got a makeover today, with Sun developer Stephen Mekosh adding Google charts below the map to help keep some of the key figures in perspective. A bar graph now shows the monthly total and contrasts it with the prior year, while also breaking out manner of death. There's an arrow on the right hand side that takes you to prior year data. The new bells and whistles, which were Stephen's conception, really put in perspective how much homicides are down so far this year. But it prior year data also shows how some of these figures can fluctuate wildly.
What other features or crime databases would you like to see us add? Keep it reasonable - everything we create has to be maintained, and I'd still like to, you know, write some articles every now and then.
(Disclaimer: some of our monthly totals pre-2009 may be off slightly from the official count. The BPD lists homicides on the day that they received word from the medical examiner that the victim's death was the result of an unjustified homicide. Prior to mid-2008, we listed them on the day of death. At some point I'm going to try to sync them up.)