England and Wales Police Crime Website Crashes

Have you managed to successfully visit http://www.police.uk/ today? I’ve not. Apparently, traffic has been so heavy that the servers have been unable to cope. According to a BBC report, it has been receiving up to five million hits per hour, which, it must be said is pretty high. It certainly bears testimony to the public’s interest in crime in their immediate neighbourhood. The crime-mapping website covers England and Wales but does not, so far as I am aware, include a facility to look into bank boardrooms.

Is it a good thing? I’m not so sure. For example, if you were a burglar might you not choose to use the site to identify streets which had not already been plundered? It could therefore make for an excellent burglar’s resource, which does seem to have been something of an oversight on the part of its designers.