Finally, David Born can check out how safe his Centennial neighborhood is from the comfort of his own home.

He also can check out crime statistics for the Oread neighborhood, Brook Creek Neighborhood, Old West Lawrence … any neighborhood in Lawrence.

The Lawrence Police Department last week began posting neighborhood crime maps on its Web site. The maps detail crime statistics compiled for the city and its neighborhoods from 1999 to 2002. The statistics will be updated periodically, police officials said.

“It doesn’t have everything, but it’s more than we’ve had before,” said Born, a member of the Centennial Neighborhood Assn.

Neighborhood groups from around the city have been meeting with police officials periodically the past two years about getting more detailed crime information.

“This is something the neighborhood groups have been wanting,” Police Lt. David Cobb said.

The maps are so new that neighborhood group leaders still are reviewing them, but early reaction is positive.

Caleb Morse, president of Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods, said he hadn’t even had a chance to look closely at the maps. But “I think that we’d approve,” he said.

“It’s certainly more than we had before,” said Richard Heckler, a Brook Creek Neighborhood Assn. member.

Born and Heckler both said they would like for the Police Department also to come up with a way to alert them about immediate crime problems. They noted the Web site crime stats were not current and stopped at the end of 2002.

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Cobb said the statistics would be updated quarterly.

The maps can be found under the statistics category on the Web site’s home page (www.lawrencepolice.org), or you can go directly to the maps page (www.lawrencepolice. org/stats/stats.html).

The maps also show statistics for sections of rural Douglas County compiled by the Sheriff’s Office. Police Department computer technicians, however, are still working to get all of last year’s crime statistics entered for the county.

There are multiple sets of charts for each neighborhood. One set of charts list crimes under the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBERS) used by the FBI in compiling statistics. In single incidents involving multiple crimes, only the most serious crime is listed.

The Kansas Incident Based Reporting System charts, compiled for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation statistics, include all of the crimes involved in a single incident.

Neighborhood groups probably won’t be the only ones interested in the crime maps. People moving to Lawrence might use them to check on neighborhoods they are considering living in, Cobb said. Parents of Kansas University students also might find them useful in checking areas where their children want to rent an apartment.

“This will give them a chance to go in and look for themselves and make their own decisions about whether or not they think the neighborhood is safe enough,” Cobb said.

The online maps are part of an overall computer upgrading that has been in process for the past couple of years, he said.