The Flint Police Department unveiled a new crime mapping webpage and social media sites today designed to better keep citizens up to date on police matters. The new digital resources were demonstrated at the Flint Public Library.

For sharing in a more immediate way, the Flint Police Department's blog, Facebook and Twitter pages will allow the department to share and seek information as it happens. The FPD blog will serve as the hub for all the new sites with links to Facebook, Twitter and the crime mapping page as well. Also at the blog will be links to the COPLOGIC report generator and all available crime reports and incident summaries. Flint Police Chief James Tolbert said "the speed at which information can be shared through social media gives us an invaluable jump on bringing incidents to a favorable conclusion. We have only been operating (the sites) for two days and have already had information shared on a assault incident which has quickened the pace of our investigation."

The sites will also allow Flint Police to share information specific to events and news from the department such as promotions, awards and recognition of community efforts. Lieutenant Leigh Golden said "both sites give us another way to build a communication link between the department and community."

The crime mapping website can be found at www.crimemapping.com/map/mi/flint. The site will allow users to pinpoint crimes on a map by type, date range, address and more. Separate icons for each crime will allow users to personally filter the map to show only the items that are of interest of them. Users will also be able to view trends, detailed reports, share searches through links and email and sign up for alerts. In addition, Flint Public Library staff have been instructed on how to assist patrons in using the site.

More information on all of these services from the Flint Police Department can be found here: http://cityofflintpd.blogspot.com/

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