There's an iPhone application for just about everything -- and now there's even one that will give you the lowdown on crime in your neighborhood.
The Spotcrime.com application costs just $1.99 and is described by its developer as a "mobile police blotter that geo-locates users, scours cop reports, blogs and newspapers for recent criminal activity and then sends out a feed customized to a two mile radius surrounding each registered user's addresses."
Robert McCrie, a criminal justice expert at John Jay College, says an informed public can be a safer public.
But there are some major shortfalls.
McCrie says it can also give a false sense of insecurity. Also, there's a problem with where -- and how -- the application compiles its data.
Since the NYPD doesn't make crime reports public, the application is forced to rely solely on secondary sources -- like scanners and blogs -- information that can be wrong or inaccurate.
