How We Classify Crimes
Every incident on Crime Hotspots is assigned a primary crime type. Consistent classification is critical for accurate trend analysis and fair comparisons across areas and time periods.
Primary crime types
The platform tracks 17 categories:
- Murder
- Attempted Murder
- Manslaughter
- Shooting
- Assault
- Robbery
- Carjacking
- Home Invasion
- Burglary
- Theft
- Sexual Assault
- Kidnapping
- Domestic Violence
- Fraud / Extortion
- Arson
- Seizures
- Other
Carjacking and Home Invasion are tracked as distinct types — they are not folded into Robbery or Burglary. This preserves granularity for area-level and trend analysis.
Shooting vs. Attempted Murder
The distinction is based on intent, not outcome:
- Shooting: gunfire occurs, but the context does not clearly establish intent to kill (e.g. indiscriminate gunfire, shots fired at a vehicle)
- Attempted Murder: the evidence establishes clear intent to kill — the victim was targeted, shot at close range, or the perpetrator made statements indicating intent
An armed robbery where a gun is present but not fired is classified as Robbery only — not Shooting.
Multiple crime types
An incident can have a primary type and related types. For example, a murder following a robbery would be classified as Murder (primary) with Robbery (related). Crime counts on the dashboard reflect the number of incidents, not the sum of all primary and related types.
Region crime profiles
The Statistics page uses crime type data to classify each region as Territorial (high murders, low property crime), Predatory (low murders, high property crime), Mixed, or Low. This classification is derived from the same primary crime types described above — it is an analytical layer on top of the raw data, not a separate classification system.
Source of truth
Classification rules are defined in the AI extraction prompt and validated before each article is ingested. The full rule document is maintained internally and reviewed whenever edge cases emerge from the data.
Related articles