Cops are calling them treasure maps for crime, and the possibilities seem endless:
* Not only can the new maps show the location of all the protective orders filed by battered women that need to be served by police in Maryland, but they can isolate the ones for spouses with gun licenses. Maybe those are the ones that should be served first.
* Not only can they show the location of every bar, tavern and liquor store in Baltimore, but they can zoom in on ones surrounded by homes of violent offenders. Maybe those are the bars beat cops should patrol more closely.
* And not only can they show unsolved homicides clumped in one part of the city, but whether any convicts out on probation for violent offenses live nearby.
"These are the people you want to talk to," says Kristen M. Mahoney, executive director of the Governor's Office on Crime Control and Prevention. "These are the people who are in the game."
Finding people "in the game" is getting easier with every stroke of the computer keyboard.
Since February, nearly every law enforcement officer in Maryland has a new tool called "Dashboard" that draws data from at least two dozen separate Maryland sources and funnels the information onto a single computer screen.
Want to know how much money a convicted felon had in his prison bank account? It's there. Want to know if the man you think raped his neighbor has his DNA on file? It's there. Want to know if someone is on probation? Not only can you find out he is, but you'll find others in his neighborhood who are, the names of their probation agents, whether they have hunting or fishing licenses, lists of traffic tickets, whether they're registered sex offenders or owe back taxes.
In just five weeks, cops across the state have conducted more than 10,000 searches of the database.
Mahoney told me the information on Dashboard is now restricted to verifiable data, not intelligence that could be interpreted differently by different people, though some police agencies want a gang database to be added to the list.
We've already seen what can happen when the Maryland State Police spy on protest groups - names of peace activists who did nothing more than exercise their rights to protest the death penalty ended up on terrorism watch lists. I wouldn't want those names popping up on computer screens in squad cars during routine traffic stops.
