Crime & 911 Dispatch Maps

What this is, and how it works

dispatchmap.org is an independent civic archive of public police and 911 dispatch activity. Many police departments publish a rolling list of recent calls for service, but that list disappears within hours. This project captures each call before it falls off, cleans and maps it, and keeps it permanently — turning a fleeting live page into a searchable public record that residents, journalists, and researchers can actually use.

It is an archive, not a live feed. Calls appear after a delay of roughly 30 minutes to 8 hours, and the map is meant for understanding patterns — not for responding to an emergency in progress.

1. Capture On a regular automated schedule through the day, a job reads the department’s public dispatch page before its rolling window drops the calls for good.
2. Clean and place Duplicates from overlapping windows are removed, each address is geocoded to a point on the map, and every call is sorted into a clear category — violent, property, traffic, disorder, fire, alarm, welfare check, medical, crisis, and other.
3. Keep Calls are stored permanently, so the record survives. To protect privacy, the exact locations of medical and crisis calls are kept approximate.

Frequently asked questions