Chicago. Memphis. Las Vegas. San Francisco.

Vinton?

The Roanoke County town of about 8,000 joined the ranks of several major metropolitan areas when it became one of a limited number of communities to sponsor an interactive crime-mapping service for its residents.

Long a valuable tool for officers, computerized crime mapping has helped thousands of police departments nationwide identify criminal hot spots and troubled areas.

The Vinton Police Department has gone one step further.

Now Vinton residents can go online and access CrimeView Community, a Web tool that makes crime mapping a public resource. Users can specify which crimes to search for, set a date range and center in on a specific address or on landmarks throughout the town. The result is an interactive map displaying crime locations, dates and current status.

"It's the taxpayers' dollars that pay for it so they deserve the information," said Sgt. M.A. Vaught.

Vaught said that neighborhood watch programs use the Web map extensively, as do landlords looking to monitor crime rates around their properties.

The publishing of crime maps for public use emerged in the mid-'90s with the rise of the Internet. However, interactive crime maps that allow citizens to set their own search parameters are a much more recent development.

CrimeView Community was produced five years ago by the Omega Group, a San Diego-based software engineering firm, and first implemented by the San Francisco Police Department in 2002, said company representative Jim Harrity.

Though the software is relatively new, the process is simple. As police reports are entered into the Vinton database, the CrimeView Community program picks them up, strips them of personal information such as victim names, and pinpoints them on a map. When a user conducts a search, the program retrieves all entries that fit the user's guidelines and returns them as clickable icons on a map of the town, said Omega project manager Jeremy Duval.

According to a 2003 Department of Justice survey, 57 percent of all officers had access to crime mapping software. However, only a handful of police departments that use the technology make their findings public.

The Vinton Police Department is just one of about 20 nationwide that currently run the CrimeView Community program, Harrity said. Though other police departments such as Chicago and Memphis have developed their own software, Harrity said that Omega has relatively little competition from other companies.

Though Omega clients run a wide gamut of populations, Vinton is by far the smallest, only about one-ninth the size of Redondo Beach, Calif., the second-smallest subscriber to the CrimeView Community program. The largest subscriber, San Diego County, houses some 3 million residents.

"They're a bit of an anomaly for us," Duval said.

Budgetary concerns have kept many smaller police departments from purchasing crime mapping software, but grants can make all the difference, Duval said.

After receiving an $83,000 grant from the federal Department of Criminal Justice Services, Vinton spent $15,000 to obtain the rights to the CrimeView Community software, said Capt. Kip Vickers. The system costs about $1,000 a year to maintain, a price well worth the benefits, Vaught said.

"It saves them [residents] a trip to the police department to ask questions about crime in their area," Vaught said. "It saves us some time, too."

Other local departments are working to play catch-up with Vinton.

The Roanoke County Police Department already has crime mapping software and is organizing information to launch a similar program within a year or two, said Lt. David McMillan. The program is being delayed by factors including the county's Web page redesign, McMillan said.

The Salem Police Department has made plans for acquiring crime mapping software but is not sure whether it will make the information available online, said Lt. Mike Green.

Despite the uncertainty, Green was optimistic about the potential for public access to crime maps.

"I can't think of any setbacks. ... I think it would be beneficial," Green said.

Not all are convinced of the software's utility, though.

Roanoke City Police Department spokeswoman Aisha Johnson said that the software would be convenient, but that citizens can already check out crime in their neighborhood by calling the police department and asking about activity in their area.

"[Crime mapping software] is something that's been looked into, but a decision has not yet been made," Johnson said.