Just over a year ago Santa brought us a scanner for Christmas. Our early plans for it were pretty minor - we only wanted a way to check up on details when we heard sirens around the neighborhood. But once we started listening, we had a hard time turning it off. Even the small events had these little bits of drama in them that made it irresistible. We started off simple, just writing down the occasional event that was interesting, and over time evolved into the real-time mapped report you see today.
In the last year we had 3,437 individual scanner entries. The most memorable came across at about 11:15am on January 30th, when an exasperated-sounding dispatcher cut in on the radio and said "We just received a call that shots have been fired at 23rd & Union and a man is laying in the street bleeding". I ran to the scene just as medics were arriving to attempt life-saving measures on Philly's owner Degene Berecha Deshasa. Unfortunately, they were not successful.
Here's the full round-up:
232 Shoplifting events (map) - The winning location? QFC at Broadway & Pike. They pulled ahead in the last 2 months to best Goodwill with a score of 61 to 56. I guess it's a bit comforting to know that most shoplifting is for the basics: food and 2nd-hand clothing.
642 Disturbances (map) - This is like the catch-all category for police events. Usually someone yelling, arguing, or refusing to leave a business.
137 Assaults (map) - From small to serious
90 Burglaries (map) - This gave us an inside view on the summer's burglary spree
169 Alarms (map) - Cops spend a lot of time dealing with false alarms.
200 Narcotics Activity reports (map) - There's a lot of drug calls, but from what we can tell they rarely result in any concrete action
168 Suspicious Circumstances (map) - See some people poking around a house who shouldn't be there? It'll end up in this category
58 Robberies (map)- We hear an average of one bank robbery every day somewhere in the city
30 Roustings (map)- Got a homeless man blocking your front door? A surprising number of people call SPD to move them along.
151 Accidents (map) - Small to major
Should be interesting to see what pops up on the scanner in 2009. Stay tuned....
