Crime-mapping - worthless?

Be sure to check out the new Crime-Mapping feature on the sheriff's website. After you are done scratching your head, start asking exactly how much did it cost and how is it useful.

First you have to know about it and then find it. And then you have to figure out how it works.

Go to www.mchenrysheriff.org
Click on Crime Mapping
Click on the "Click here to view..." (you don't really want to view the "application"; you want to view the map; right?)
Then you are presented with a Disclaimer. This is probably where you will start shaking your head.
Now, stare at the map. Well?
Notice the Legend to the right. Wouldn't it nice if something happened after you click on one of those colored buttons?
Duh.... what to do next? (Scratch your head more at this point.)
Want to search for something? Click on the binoculars.
Select Crimes Against Persons (this will be the first thing you'll worry about; right?). Check for the entire County and for the past 30 days.
Click on Search.
Grab your seat!

The first two I hovered over were Motorist Assists. What is a Crime Against Person about that?

And look at the number of red dots. If this is accurate (it can't be), we'd better triple the number of deputies on the road. And put a couple of more floors on the jail building.

Then I hovered over another dot and read MOTORIST ASST.

And then CITIZEN ASSIST. What is a Crime Against Person about that?

Maybe this is why the Sheriff's Department needs an Intelligence Unit. But will the person in charge risk telling Undersheriff Zinke that the Department got a rotten deal on the Crime Mapping? Deputies have learned that they'd better be careful about opening their mouths about things being done wrong.

I told a friend today that it was a good thing I never got hired as a cop. The first day I would have been telling them everything that was wrong, and then I would have been washing patrol cars, not driving them.