JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — During the first of six town halls the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is hosting across Duval County Thursday, a new crime map will be unveiled, according to officers.
As more people move to Florida, the crime map is a tool JSO encourages residents to use to look up crime in their neighborhoods. But previously, there were some “issues” with the map, according to JSO, and the crimes it would and wouldn’t show. Now they say that will change.
After Magan Maye, a mother of four, learned a teenager was shot by strangers at her apartment complex in May according to police, First Coast News looked up other incidents of crime at her Argyle Forest address.
“I just don’t feel safe,” Maye said in May. "I do not let them hang out in this neighborhood so most people don’t even know I have four kids.”
But at one point on JSO's crime map, which is run by an outside vendor, the incident of the teen shot in Maye’s neighborhood didn’t appear. JSO said that “issue” will now change, as officer Christian Hancock explained.
“We’re looking at getting rid of this third-party vendor and we're gonna develop an in-house program that will do the same thing," Hancock said.
JSO said their new crime map will show all crimes in a neighborhood. JSO explained upon further questioning about whether the original map was accurate that only the highest offense from the past six months appeared on the old map.
Police records show officers were called to Maye’s apartment complex more than 200 times in five months. Hancock said that doesn’t mean there were hundreds of crimes.
“We respond to a lot of calls for services that aren't crimes," he said. "Whether it's a disturbance, just a verbal disagreement between neighbors, verbal disagreement between a store and a customer."
With the new crime map and as Florida’s population grows, police encourage you to use this tool.
“We have the crime mapping tool, we would recommend you search it,” Hancock said.
JSO told First Coast News Thursday they didn't have information on when the new crime map would go "live" online, but that it would be discussed during the town hall meeting. There will be town halls in each of Jacksonville's districts on Thursday starting at 6 p.m. Find the locations here.
First Coast News reached out to the third-party vendor for comment on Thursday, but did not immediately hear back.