January crime maps: Where crime happened on Capitol Hill

The deliberate manner in which the Seattle Police Department compiles and distributes its monthly crime statistics means we won't know the 'official' tallies for Capitol Hill's January crime totals for months. But with the new tools -- including Seattle's highest-rated news app yet --  we're building with our news partner SeattleCrime, we can start to give you a sense of what has been happening on your streets, where the problem spots are and, yes, maybe even good news on the crime front from time to time.

Below, we've posted a series of SeattleCrime maps plotting reports of criminal activity culled from SPD's public reports. The locations are approximate and based on the street block information provided by SPD. This part of the process is done by computer magic. Occasionally, we get a location very wrong but mostly the locations are very close and give you a good sense of some of the Hill's crime hot-spots. This is a new feature for us so took a little more time to bring together than we expected. We'll make it a regular thing -- and pull it together earlier in the month -- going forward. Also watch for our wrap-up of SPD's 2009 statistics soon.

All Violent Crimes
As you can see, January's crimes categorized as involving physical violence were contained mostly south of Thomas in the densest, most active portion of the Hill. The include this robbery in which a man was beat with a bottle and this robbery that resulted in a woman getting whacked in the head for her cellphone. You can click the map to learn more about the other incidents.

All Thefts
As scary as the violent crime is, property crime is a much more pervasive part of Hill life. Here's a look at January's theft reports -- you'll note that these are mostly car prowls.

Business Burglaries
This plot shows the reported break-ins at Capitol Hill's businesses. You'll note this is one of the few categories where the criminal activity included northern Cap Hill in the fun. Included in January's reports were a break-in at a Pike antique store, and the infamous Po Dog flat screen TV burglary.

Residential Burglaries
Burglaries from our homes and apartment buildings are shown here. For the most part, the January break-ins outside of the single family home residential areas north of Thomas and east of 15th were parking garage jobs involving bashing car windows and grabbing electronics and paperwork that might be useful for ID theft, etc.