The Park Ridge Police Department has rolled out an interactive map to track where criminal activity takes place across Park Ridge.

The map, available on the Park Ridge Police Department website, is a response to a request from aldermen earlier this year to have a better idea of where crimes are occurring in Park Ridge.

The request came on the heels of a heated discussion about the amount of illegal activity in the city, with some aldermen suggesting that incidents were more concentrated in the southern parts of the city near the I-90 expressway.

Police department data shows that the city’s crime rate has dipped. Some aldermen, however, said the feeling around the city does not reflect those numbers.

“The idea of this mapping and GIS system is to give a visual of where these things are at,” Executive Officer Tom Gadomski said.

The map uses data from police reports and will be searchable by date and the type of incident, police told council members. It will log activity that took place on or after Apr 1, 2023. Users can narrow their search range to a particular time frame or type of incident, Gadomski said.

Police staff also cautioned that the map will classify activity as it’s initially reported to the city and that subsequent investigations may classify the incident differently.

Outgoing Police Chief Frank Kaminski recommended that the city revisit the map after six months to evaluate how it was working.