Communities grappling with high levels of crime are usually easy to spot. Unsavory individuals, signs of vandalism, unkempt gardens, boarded-up windows, abandoned houses, and closed-down businesses can all sound alarms that a neighborhood isn’t safe to live in. Even public places in such areas (like streets, parks, and subways) would look neglected, worn down, and full of trash and graffiti. Often, a quick drive around the neighborhood is enough to pick up on these obvious signs.
However, in most parts of the country, safety threats are not so apparent. A community could look perfectly normal on the outset, yet harbor various risks and dangers that could jeopardize your family’s safety. To identify them, you may need to stay tuned to neighborly gossip, keep a close eye on those living down the street, and perhaps learn a little about your home’s past, too.
Now, all these may seem like a whole lot of work. But don’t worry, here are simple techniques to find the information you need to assess a neighborhood’s safety without breaking a sweat.
This platform has records of more than 118 million U.S. addresses, which you can easily search using a street number, street name, city, state, and ZIP code.
But how can it help you gauge an area’s safety? In several ways. By reverse searching the home address on Nuwber, you can learn more about its previous residents to understand what kind of people have lived there in the past. You could also find neighborhood information, including the average home price, property types, children and adults per household, percentage of females, and income levels. (Higher property prices, more families, and above-average household income, for instance, would typically hint at a safer residential area.)
An address search on Nuwber could also get you up to speed on the neighbors (with their names, personal information, criminal records, etc.) as well as sex offenders living within a 3-mile radius.
The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website was set up in 2005 by the U.S. Department of Justice. It compiles data from state and local governments to create a national directory of registered sex offenders. Today, it serves as an important tool for citizens to access the latest information on offenders.
You can search this site based on a variety of criteria, like name and zip code.
If you choose to run an address search, enter the home address, city, and state, and select a radius from the property (between one and three miles) to search within. Once you do, the site will pull up records of sex offenders living in the selected area. Together with names and aliases, it could provide their photos, ages, addresses, physical details (like height, weight, hair and eye color, scars, and tattoos), and descriptions of the crimes committed.
Maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this site brings together the most up-to-date crime data from local law enforcement agencies. It is an excellent resource for understanding how a city fares (in terms of safety) based on reported incidents.
Keep in mind that the Crime Data Explorer provides statistics and not facts or news related to individual incidents. But it is still a pretty useful tool for you to get an idea of the overall levels of crime in an area and to compare a city with nearby ones (or to find a safer suburb if you are planning to move).
You can search the platform by crime type (i.e., property crimes, homicides, hate crimes, etc.) and then filter by state, local agency, and period (from three months to ten years). There is also an option to select a custom period to search.
Fellow residents can be a valuable source of information, especially when it comes to safety concerns. By forging a close relationship with key people living in the neighborhood, you could gain instant access to info on suspicious activities, security incidents, and the like.
One way to interact regularly with local residents and stay in the loop on important events is by joining the local Neighborhood Watch. These organized groups liaise directly with law enforcement agencies and, therefore, are usually among the first to find out about anything of concern going on in the community.
If you don’t have a Neighborhood Watch in your locality, consider attending Homeowners’ Association meetings or joining a club or other local activity (say, volunteering for a community project). You can also network with neighbors online using platforms such as Facebook and Nextdoor.
Local media is sure to cover incidents like murders, muggings, and vandalism that would be of interest to residents. So, checking news reports is an effective method to stay informed.
To find old news stories related to local crime, you can always use Google or some other search engine to scour the internet.
Many of these platforms even allow users to set up alerts to receive notifications when new content appears online on a specific topic.
On Google, for example, you can do this by logging in and visiting the Google Alerts page. There, you could add keywords and select the frequency, source, and region under “Show options” to set up specific criteria for the alerts.
In some communities, it is hard to miss the glaring red flags of criminal activity (like boarded-up houses and public vandalism). But this is not the case in most places.
If you are wondering how secure your neighborhood is, there are several ways to get a clearer picture of potential safety issues. For instance, an address search on Nuwber could get details about the properties and residents in the community (including their criminal history). The national sex offenders’ website could provide records of registered offenders living near you, and the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer can retrieve historical crime statistics to understand general trends.
However, to remain up-to-date on incidents of concern as and when they happen, you will want to stay tuned to the local news. But when it comes to issues that don’t get picked up by formal channels, the neighbors are your best source of information.
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
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