Buffalo crime map

Where Buffalo’s reports come from

Every report on CrimePing’s Buffalo map is published by the Buffalo Police Department through the City of Buffalo’s open-data program. CrimePing doesn’t gather reports of its own and doesn’t edit the ones it shows. When you open the app, your phone asks the city’s data directly for reports around the point you’re looking at, then draws them on the map.

Buffalo updates its data daily, so the past 24 hours and the past week are usually filled in. Before publishing, the city rounds each report’s location for privacy. A pin marks the general area of a report, not a particular house.

Tap a report and you’ll see what Buffalo publishes about it: the incident type, the date and time, the street address as the city lists it, and the neighborhood, police district, council district and ZIP code.

What kinds of reports appear

Buffalo labels every report with its own incident type, such as larceny, burglary, robbery, assault or theft of a vehicle. CrimePing keeps that label and sorts it into one of six colored categories, so the map is easy to scan:

• Violent: reports such as assault and robbery.
• Property: larceny, burglary, criminal mischief and similar reports.
• Vehicle: theft or unauthorized use of a vehicle.
• Fraud: fraud, forgery and identity theft.
• Drugs: drug offenses.
• Other: anything that doesn’t fit the five above.

The colors describe the type of report. They don’t measure how serious a particular incident was.

How to check crime near an address in Buffalo

1. Open CrimePing

   On the welcome screen, tap Use my location, or pick Buffalo from the list of cities to start downtown.

2. Move the map to the address

   CrimePing searches around a point on the map rather than a typed address. Drag the map until the street you care about is in the middle, then tap Search this area.

3. Choose a radius

   In Settings, pick a quarter mile, half a mile, 1 mile, 2 miles or 5 miles. A quarter mile covers a few blocks; 5 miles covers much of the city.

4. Choose a time range

   Use the tabs along the top of the map: the past 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or a year.

5. Tap a dot

   Each dot opens the full report. The Recent tab lists the same reports by time or by distance, and Trends compares this period with the one before.

6. Save a watch zone

   In Alerts, save a place such as Home or Work with a radius of up to 2 miles, for all reports or violent reports only. When iOS allows, your phone checks it in the background and sends a notification when something new is reported there.

Neighborhoods across the city

The map works the same in every part of the city the Buffalo Police Department covers, from Elmwood Village and Allentown to North Buffalo, South Buffalo, Black Rock, Riverside, the Lower West Side and Downtown. Each report carries the neighborhood the city assigned it, which helps when you live near the edge of one.

Towns next door, such as Cheektowaga, Amherst and Lackawanna, have their own police departments. Their reports aren’t part of Buffalo’s data, so the map stops at the city line.

Read the map with care

• Reports are preliminary. Police can reclassify, correct or remove a report after it’s published. CrimePing shows the current version each time it loads.
• Locations are rounded. Treat a pin as an area. Don’t assume a report involves the home it’s drawn on.
• A report isn’t a verdict. It records what was reported to police, not what a court decided.
• Not everything is reported. Some incidents never reach police, so a quiet map isn’t a promise.
• It isn’t for emergencies. CrimePing can’t contact police. In an emergency, call 911.

Buffalo crime map: common questions

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