MyCommunityWatch is a free crime notification service, using verified public data from the police to notify you if a major crime has been reported in your area.
When a crime is reported to the police, a public report is also made using anonymized open data.
As part of their open data policy, your local police service may publish anonymized data of major crimes as they are reported. This information includes the approximate date, time and location of each incident, such as Assault, Auto Theft, Break & Enter, Robbery, Sexual Violation, Shooting, Theft Over $5,000 and Homicide.
This data represents frontline reporting from officers investigating actual crimes that have been reported to the police. Some details may be subject to change as cases are more fully investigated.
To help protect the privacy of those involved, this data has been anonymized by the police before it is published and does not contain any identifying details such as names or addresses.
MyCommunityWatch can notify you by email if a major crime is being investigated in your area.
When you subscribe to MyCommunityWatch, you can personalize your notification settings. Simply provide an email address and a postal code, tell us how often you want to hear from us and we’ll do the rest.
If a major crime is reported in your area, MyCommunityWatch will notify you by email. Each incident is labelled with the approximate date, time, location and a police reference number. Exact locations are randomly offset to nearby intersections to help protect the privacy of those involved.
The purpose of MyCommunityWatch is to help raise awareness of criminal activity in our neighbourhoods, aid in our collective ability to recognize suspicious activity when we see or hear it, and highlight the importance of reporting suspicious activity to the proper authorities.
Your Questions
In case of an Emergency or a Crime in Progress, call 9-1-1 immediately.
If you require police assistance but are not in an emergency situation (e.g., reporting thefts, vandalism, fraud, etc.) or for other situations where no person or property is in immediate danger, please call the non-emergency number for your local police service.
To report anonymously, please call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or visit 222tips.com.
Every incident investigated by your local police service is assigned a unique reference number — also known as an occurrence or case number. These reference numbers are included alongside each incident in MyCommunityWatch Alerts. If you would like to provide investigators with more information about a particular incident, please contact your local police service and quote the reference number.
To report anonymously, please call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or visit 222tips.com.
We use open data from local police services in Toronto, York, Peel, Durham, Halton and Santa Clara County, California. This data represents frontline reporting from officers investigating actual crimes that have been reported to the police.
The data in your notifications matches the same data published by your local police service at the time of distribution. To protect the privacy of those involved, no personal information is ever shared and the exact locations of all incidents are randomly offset to nearby intersections. As cases are more fully investigated, some details may be subject to change. We do not report on changes to ongoing investigations.
The privacy of your personal information is very important to us. Your email address and postal code are only used for the purposes of personalizing your notification settings and communicating with you. We do not share your personal information with anyone.
MyCommunityWatch is designed to notify you when a major crime incident has been reported to the police in your area. When you subscribe to MyCommunityWatch, you can tell us your postal code and set a reporting radius (in kilometres). If a crime is reported within your reporting radius, we’ll let you know.
Ideally, it is best to set your reporting radius to 1, 2 or 3 km. If you set your reporting radius too high, you may receive very long lists of incidents and it can be more difficult to determine which of those incidents actually occurred in your immediate area.
Our system will only report up to 50 incidents in one notification email. If you find that you are regularly receiving very long lists of reported incidents, then you may want to lower your reporting radius.
MyCommunityWatch notifies you only once an incident has been reported to the police and published on their public safety data portal. If an incident is reported to the police days, weeks or even months later, it may appear in your notifications on the day it was reported and published — not necessarily on the day the incident occurred.
To change your notification settings, simply unsubscribe from our service using the link in the bottom of one of our emails. Wait a few minutes and then re-subscribe using your new notification settings.
Our system supports one location per email address. If you want to receive MyCommunityWatch Alerts for a second location, you sign up again using a second email address.
We are a group of like-minded volunteers and Toronto-area residents whose work with Neighbourhood Watch and Community Police Liaison Committees has been recognized by the Toronto Police Service, local media outlets, and members of government.
MyCommunityWatch was created to raise awareness of criminal activity in our neighbourhoods and aid in our collective ability to recognize suspicious activity when we see and/or hear it. If you know about a crime reported in your area, you are more likely to take precautions to prevent it from happening again, and report suspicious activity you may have seen or heard to the proper authorities.
MyCommunityWatch is designed for local area residents, caregivers, schools, business owners, community leaders, Neighbourhood Watch groups, Homeowners Associations (HOAs), Business Improvement Areas (BIAs), Community Police Liaison Committees (CPLCs), etc. Our experience has proven that there is a great deal of public interest in receiving crime notifications and helping to improve the safety and security of our neighbourhoods.
If you have any further questions, please contact us at info@MyCommunityWatch.org