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Frederick city residents may now chase down a police caper from the comfort of their home computers, thanks to a new Web site launched by the Frederick Police Department last week.

The department has joined in www.CrimeReports.com, a Web site that logs nearly every call for service to which police officers across the country receive and respond. The site allows anyone to search for beat checks, traffic stops, theft reports and other crime activity by ZIP code or even via a specific address or neighborhood.

"We're always trying to get that information out there electronically, so this is an intelligent use of technology," Frederick Police Chief Kim Dine said. "We get a lot of calls asking, ‘What happened…' This gives citizens the ability of do a near immediate inquiry."

The site logs calls for service, which does not necessarily indicate that a crime took place. Such a determination is usually done after the officer arrives and investigates. Actual crimes are logged in the department's monthly Uniform Crime Reports. Other information is available on the department's Web site (www.cityoffrederick.com/police).

What is transmitted to the CrimeReports.com Web site is raw data that leads to initial response and investigation. The calls for service are transmitted to the site everyday at 2 a.m., and show the activity through 11:59 p.m. the previous day. Every call for service dating back to Jan. 1, 2009 is accessible on the site.

Residents can limit or expand searches to filter calls for service and receive e-mail alerts about specific crimes they want to continually track. Available in the searches are the date, time and brief description of the call, and the case number.

Charts and graphs, as well as access to information from neighboring jurisdictions, are also available for comparative analysis. Proactive policing, such as the department's community policing initiatives, can also be monitored.

"It gives the public a taste of the workload our officers have, and in the same vein, a dose of what they are getting for their money," Dine said.

The Web site, funded through a one-year-grant from the Governor's Office of Crime Patrol and Prevention, has been a work in progress since October, said Steve Haller, the department's head of technology services division. Haller and his staff have spent months customizing the template to fit the scope and magnitude of the department's information.

"We wanted to make this meaningful — and that we did it right," Haller said.

Haller said that he is excited for the possibilities of the site, and in about 90 days, he will assess the site's traffic to see how residents have taken to it. In the future, information could be pushed to the site more frequently.

"While we're not the developer of the site, we can add more features," Haller said. "It's not feasible to push a call as soon as it comes in, but we might be able to push it twice a day."

Dine said that he believed that above all, CrimeReports.com helps to further round out the department's mission to involve the community.

"The more educated the residents are, the better they are enabled to help us combat crime, take ownership of their neighborhoods," he said.

E-mail Erica L. Green at egreen@gazette.net.