The Real Facts About Crime in Kennydale

The citizens of Renton are very fortunate that the Renton Police Dept. has chosen to become part of CrimeReports, a collection of over 1000 law enforcement agencies throughout the USA and Canada, that are committed to transparency, public access and citizen engagement in the process of crime reporting and disclosure. Through their website, www.crimereports.com , all persons having internet access can access crime data that is far more detailed and credible than what one may encounter on social media.  For example, here is a recap of our situation in Kennydale compared to all of Renton, starting at 1/1/2017:

​The types of crimes being tracked in this period consist of: Assault, Robbery, Breaking & Entering, Property Crime, Theft, Theft from Vehicle, Theft of Vehicle, and Drugs. 
Interestingly, Kennydale consistently represented only 6.5% or less of the total crimes reported for this 3 month period....somewhat comforting, but maybe not so much if you were one of the 6% !  Also, Kennydale saw none of the assault or drug type incidents that occurred elsewhere in town.

Here’s how to use the site:  go to www.crimereports.com , and enter Renton in the “Search Crime Reports” box.  In the drop-down menu that appears, select Renton, Washington.  A map centered on Renton will appear.  You can move around in the map, zoom, etc. in the same manner as you do with Bing Maps or Google Maps.  To display the city’s borderline, click on the icon that displays a gold shield.  You will see icons for the various types of crimes.  If you are looking at the Renton map and you don’t see any icons at all, you are zoomed out too far.  If you see a lot of circles that are overlapping, you should zoom in more.  At this point, you may see a combination of circles with a number inside, and other circles with a blue outline and a symbol inside.  This is probably the best zoom level to use.  If you still see some circles with a grey outline and a number inside, that shows that a quantity of crime incidents have occurred close together. When you click on that icon, blue icons for the individual crime incidents will break out.  When you click on an individual blue icon, full details for that incident will appear in the list at the right-hand side of screen.  Also, at the upper left-hand side of screen, you can click on the Filter button to bring up a menu for choosing your Date Range, Time of Day, Incident Types, etc.  Finally, there are tabs at the top of your screen where you can read FAQ’s and other useful general information about the site.  Also, the site has a video tutorial that is helpful in learning how everything works.  Give it a try; you won’t blow anything up!

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