The thin veil of ineptitude will soon be ever so slightly lifted...

Coming in on the heels of San Jose, San Diego and Fremont (the parking lot with a mayor beat us in the tech race, my friends), San Francisco will now be using the technologically-forward and user-friendly site Crime Reports, according to Fog City Journal. This tool is so, so, so long overdue. Can I add a few more "so's" in there? Please let me elaborate. During my City Hall internship my senior year of college, one of my tasks (aside from being on receiving end of many angry phone calls) was to track the efficiency of San Francisco's current crime mapping system by comparing the number of crimes that show up on the map to the number of crimes sent to me by various precinct captains. Over a long period of time, my only conclusion was... wrong, wrong, wrong! In addendum: the script was constantly buggy, and you really can't find a less user-friendly application.

My only problem with Crime Reports is that it STILL doesn't let you export raw data into a file, but at least it'll graph the data for you. I guess this is a heads up to all the future interns who'll be keying in data by hand from the site: Have fun, guys.