Queensland’s top cop has crime website concerns
Queensland Police want a Panamanian crime website to take down information on street addresses.
The CrimeMap.info website allows users to scroll over a map of Queensland to see where crimes have occurred.
It’s based on Queensland Police Service data and shows crimes ranging from murder to property offences.
Police Commissioner Ian Stewart says the company is being asked to modify its site for privacy reasons.
“We’re contacting the company involved. If we haven’t already done so, that will happen today,” he told reporters.
“Certainly it is appropriate that the general public have access to quite accurate crime data but not at the cost of personal privacy.”
Mr Stewart said Queensland police had not intended for its crime data to show where victims of crime lived.
“It certainly wasn’t our intent that that occur,” he said.
Publicly available Queensland police data shows streets where crimes have occurred but not individual addresses.
The police service does not publish details on sex crimes and domestic violence offences under the state government’s open data policy, which reveals places where crimes have occurred since 2000.