After 4 car break-ins, Minneapolis man launches crime-tracking website

Car break-ins have been a persistent issue across the Twin Cities, with hundreds reported over the past two summers alone. 

For Clint McMahon, the crime has become all too familiar.

McMahon said security cameras outside his south Minneapolis home have repeatedly captured the break-ins. Within about a year, he said his car windows have been smashed four times outside his south Minneapolis home near 48th Street East and Chicago Avenue South

"A car rolls up, they stop, a couple people get out with flashlights," McMahon said. "Next thing you know, you see a flashlight shining through a car window and then less than a minute later everyone's gone."

Despite repeatedly calling 911, filing police reports and contacting city leaders, McMahon said he felt little progress was being made.

Searching for a way to better shine a spotlight on the problem, McMahon turned to his background as a software engineer. Together with his wife, he launched Glass On The Street, a website designed to track and map vehicle break-ins throughout Minneapolis.

The site combines publicly available crime data with reports submitted by users, allowing visitors to see where break-ins are occurring and identify potential hotspots across the city.

"I just wanted to find something that we could do to start to track this problem that we're having in the city," McMahon said.

Users are encouraged to submit details about break-ins and are directed to file police reports if they have not already done so.

The Minneapolis Police Department maintains an online crime dashboard, but it doesn't get as detailed as tracking car break-ins. WCCO has reached out to the city agency for updated break-in statistics but has not yet heard back.

McMahon said the site's data is still in its early stages and cautioned that statistics could be wrong since the website is still in testing, but he hopes a growing number of submissions will reveal better trends over time.

"The data is really new," he said. "We're just starting to get more user submissions, so once we get some more user submissions we can really see what's going on around town and if there's any patterns that are emerging."

McMahon said the website has been online for only a few weeks but has already received nearly 100 user-submitted reports.