Neudata Alternative Data Summit · NYC 2026
CrimeCaster
Crime data as a market signal.
Real-time crime intelligence for asset managers, REITs, and macro traders. Built on SpotCrime — the largest aggregator of US crime incident data, sourcing from 2,000+ police departments.
The signal
One of the most underutilized alternative datasets in finance.
2,000+ police sources
Direct feeds from departments and sheriff's offices, updated daily.
Hyperlocal precision
Incident type, location, timestamp — down to the block.
Dual use
Leading indicator for alpha; risk flag for loss prevention.
Alpha generation
Crime drop is a gentrification signal — before it's priced in.
Declining crime in a ZIP code precedes rising property values by roughly 6–18 months. Smart money tracks the inflection early — before cap-rate compression is visible in comps.
Backtest data available under NDA.
Risk management
Rising crime is the early warning nobody is watching.
Rising crime drives retail flight, tenant default risk, and cap-rate compression — often 9–12 months before it shows up in earnings calls or stress-test models.
Crime spike detected
CrimeCaster API flags corridor.
Foot traffic drops
–22% in 60 days.
Anchor tenant threatens exit
Lease renegotiation risk rises.
Retail flight accelerates
Vacancy rate climbs.
Cap-rate expansion / value erosion
NOI impacted before comps catch up.
Loan underwriting
Flag collateral risk in commercial portfolios before default.
CRE stress testing
Model tenant default risk by micro-location crime trajectory.
Insurance pricing
Crime-adjusted underwriting for commercial and residential.
The regime change
Violence collapsed in 2024–2025. Nobody is pricing it.
U.S. homicides fell ~15% in 2024 and an estimated ~20% in 2025 — plausibly the lowest murder rate on record. Neither political side benefits from the story, so there is no narrative champion. That is the alpha.
- U.S. homicides, 2024
- −15%
- U.S. homicides, 2025 (est.)
- −20%
- Fewer murders vs. 2020–2021
- ~12,000
- 2024 violent crime rate
- Lowest since 1969
It is not one or two cities
Philadelphia
Fewest murders since 1969
−40%
Baltimore
Fewest since 1965
−40% vs. 2019
Chicago
587 → 417 (2024→2025)
−29%
Los Angeles
Fewest since 1966
−26% gun homicides
Birmingham
Single-year collapse
−49%
New York
Shooting victims & incidents
Record low
The trend is global — England & Wales, London, Mexico, Central America (−58% over a decade), South America (−22.6%). Any single-country explanation is incomplete.
Full analysis: spotcrime.io/blog/why-has-violence-fallen-off-a-cliff
The data
Powered by SpotCrime.
CrimeCaster is the institutional data product of SpotCrime.com — the consumer crime-mapping platform serving the public since 2007. Same data, built for a different desk.
SpotCrime has aggregated US crime incident data continuously since 2008 — a corpus of 272M+ records sourced directly from 2,000+ police departments and sheriff's offices, updated daily. That depth is the moat: 18 years of consistent, geocoded incident history means signals can be backtested across full market cycles, not just the post-2020 anomaly.
- Records since 2008
- 272M+
- Normalized & scored incidents
- 50M+
- Police sources
- 2,000+
- Update cadence
- Daily
- Coverage
- Nationwide US
Incident types covered
API access via spotcrime.io.
Provenance & compliance
Clean data, by design.
Every record originates from official police department and sheriff's office feeds — public records, with the source URL attached to each incident. No scraped consumer data, no PII, no MNPI exposure, no web-scraping gray areas. CrimeCaster is one of the few alternative datasets that passes compliance review without caveats. Provenance documentation available for diligence.
The product
CrimeCaster API.
A scored REST API delivering normalized crime intelligence — ready for quant models, risk systems, and data workflows.
Live endpoint
# GET /crimes.json — recent incidents near a point GET https://api.spotcrime.com/crimes.json ?lat=39.4143 &lon=-76.6019 &radius=0.01 # decimal degrees (~0.7 mi) &key=***
Planned v1 (cursor pagination, ISO timestamps)
GET https://api.spotcrime.com/v1/incidents ?lat=40.7580 &lon=-73.9855 &radius_mi=0.5 &types=shooting,robbery &start=2026-03-01T00:00:00Z &limit=100 # Response (excerpt) { "incidents": [ { "id": "285636408", "type": "assault", "occurred_at": "2026-06-02T21:17:00-04:00", "address": "15600 BLK OLD COLUMBIA PIKE", "lat": 39.11131, "lon": -76.932 } ], "next_cursor": "eyJvIjoxMjM0NX0" }
Query by lat/lon, radius, date, and type
Precise geographic and temporal targeting.
Normalized crime density index (0–100)
Scored and comparable across markets.
Bulk delivery
S3, SFTP, or Snowflake data share — your pipeline, your terms.
Trial access for qualified institutions
Sample dataset and API credentials on request.
Full reference: spotcrime.io/api/docs
Live feed sample
30,000+ geocoded incidents daily.
Every incident is classified, geocoded to lat/lon, and linked to its original source URL. An additional breaking-news layer surfaces roughly 1% more reports in real time, before they appear in official police feeds.
- 100% geocoded
- Crime classified
- Source URL provided
- Breaking-news layer
Sandbox access
Test before you commit.
CrimeCaster data is available as a free trial on both Snowflake Marketplace and AWS Data Exchange — spin up a sandbox in minutes, no contract required.
Snowflake Marketplace
Trial listing · zero-copy data share
- Instant trial access; no ETL, no pipeline setup.
- Zero-copy sharing: data lives in your Snowflake account.
- Query CrimeCaster density scores directly in SQL.
- Upgrade to full subscription with one click.
AWS Data Exchange
Free trial subscription · AWS Marketplace
- Free trial subscription; cancel anytime.
- Data delivered to S3 or Amazon Redshift.
- Plug directly into existing AWS analytics workflows.
- 300+ alternative-data providers already on the exchange.
Both sandboxes include 90 days of historical incident data across a sample geography. Contact us to specify your target market.
Get access
Request a data sample.
Available to qualified institutions. Reach out for a trial dataset, API credentials, or a custom data delivery.
Colin Drane
Founder, SpotCrime.com
Presented at Neudata Alternative Data Summit, NYC 2026.