High Desert Crime Tracker provides a plain language feed of daily San Bernardino County Sheriff and California Highway Patrol calls for the Morongo Basin area, including Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, Morongo Valley, Landers, Pioneertown, Rimrock, Desert Heights, Copper Mountain, Johnson Valley, and Wonder Valley. Calls are cross-referenced with Sheriff press releases to connect further information about select calls.
High Desert Crime Tracker currently pulls its data from publicly available sources provided by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's office and the California Highway Patrol. The patrol stations that serve our area are the SBCSD Morongo Basin station, the SBCSD Yucca Valley station, the SBCSD Twentynine Palms station, and the CHP Morongo Basin station. This feed is updated every half hour from those sources, and the time of the most recent update is visible at the top of the feed. If something recent is missing, please wait for the next update.
On occasion, the source information from the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department or the California Highway Patrol is delayed or missing for various reasons. When that occurs, the information on this feed will also be delayed.
For instructions on using the different features and functions, please tap one of the headings below.
Each line of the main feed shows a single San Bernardino County Sheriff or California Highway Patrol dispatch call or incident, including the time of the call and the call type as indicated by the dispatcher. The incidents are sorted showing the most recent call at the top of the list. You can scroll down to go back through the day, and even previous days. To go further back, you can even select previous pages at the bottom of the feed. The majority of calls are from the Sheriff's department, since they're contracted to handle most of the policing in our area. The California Highway Patrol calls are easily identified by a tan-colored left edge to match the traditionally tan CHP uniforms.
To view the call details, simply touch or click the light blue row for that call. The call will expand to show any additional information that is available. From there, you can touch the icons for additional detail about the call type and the disposition code entered by the officers at the scene.
Occasionally, calls are updated after officers arrive at the location and assess the situation. When that happens, the new information will be added to the call detail, and a small asterisk will appear next to the call time. You will be able to see approximately when the call updated, and if the call type was changed, you will be able to see the orignal type that was assigned when the call was first dispatched. In some cases, this allows for a clearer picture of the incident.
You can touch the street address to Google map the general location of the call, but please keep in mind, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department does not release the actual street address for each call, only the block number or intersection. So, street addresses listed on High Desert Crime Tracker should not be assumed to identify the specific physical address of the incident, but merely the general location.
In addition to linking to a map of the location, you can also touch the icon next to each address to see only calls for that specific location, which sometimes allows for a clearer picture of events as they occur.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department occasionally posts press releases about certain incidents. Those press releases will also be included in the High Desert Crime Tracker Main Feed, identified by the icon. This information can be released several days or even weeks after the incident occurs, however the feed will sort them based on the orignal time of the incident. Therefore the press release will usually appear adjacent to the original call. Any additional information about the call available in the press release will be visible in the expanded view for that item.
In the upper right corner you will find a link to the SBCSD or CHP station that originated the call, and you will also find the icon, which will copy a sharable link to your clipboard that will bring users directly to that specific call detail page. You can use this link on social media sites or other locations to help spread the word!
To close the call detail view, simply touch the light blue row again.
High Desert Crime Tracker calls can be filtered by various criteria by touching the icon and adjusting the search settings in the settings panel. Filters can be set to only show certain call types, dispatch stations, disposition codes, or calls within a certain date range. When a filter is set, the settings icon will display a red dot to indicate that you are looking at filtered results. You will also see a small red dot next to any active filters inside the settings panel. To turn off an individual filter, simply select the first item on its dropdown list. To close the settings panel, simply touch the settings icon again or touch the X in the upper right corner of the panel.
High Desert Crime Tracker can also use your current location to filter and highlight incidents that are within a preset radius. If you've allowed your device location to be used, or if you enter a location manually, all calls located within two miles of that location will automatically be highlighted in red. You can also set the Search Radius setting to only show calls within a certain distance from your location. Device location information is only used for these functions, and no other user information is collected.
High Desert Crime Tracker has also developed an Alert Level setting, which can filter calls by their potential impact to the community. This is a largely subjective system, but will help to decern calls that may require a higher level of alertness from calls that are simply administrative in nature. The following list shows the basic guidelines for the Alert Level setting.
Calls marked with an alert level of 4 will automatically be highlighted in red, however it's important to note that in many cases even these calls will be easily handled with a routine response from the Sheriff, and there may be no reason for heightened alertness.
In all instances, High Desert Crime Tracker will work with the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department and California Highway Patrol to ensure that all information is as accurate as possible and complies with department guidelines.
To return the app to its default setup, simply click the icon to reset all search settings.
If you want to see a geographical distribution of all San Bernardino County Sheriff and California Highway Patrol calls in your area, you can select the Heat Map view from the main menu at the top of your screen. If you've allowed your device location to be shared, this view will show you a map centered on that location. The map can then be zoomed and scanned using two fingers.
Calls will be shown on the map with a gradient color that indicates the volume of calls for that area. In other words, if it's just a single call, you will see a small, light blue spot on the map. If there has been more than one call in any area, that color will gradually increase from blue to yellow to red to indicate the increased volume of calls.
Keep in mind that the San Bernardino County Sheriff's office does not release specific home addresses for each call, but rather just the nearest block number. So individual call locations on the map are usually only accurate to within a block of the actual call location.
The Heat Map view is designed to visualize large numbers of calls at one time, so you cannot select individual calls from this view. However, you can filter the calls shown on the map by the same search settings described above. For instance, if you want to see only the calls over the last week, you can reduce the date range in the search settings. Or, if you want to see only calls with a higher Alert Level, you can select that level in the search settings. Alternatively, if you touch a location on the map, you will be given the option to show all calls from that general loction in the Main Feed. This may help to narrow your search if you're trying to locate a specific call.
To go back to the Main Feed, simply select it in the main menu.
High Desert Crime Tracker is designed as a mobile web app, so even though you can access it from a desktop, it's best viewed on a mobile device. You can also easily create an icon on your home screen to quickly access an app-style view of High Desert Crime Tracker at any time. Nothing is installed on your device, it just gives you quick and easy access!
Now, when you want to view the feed, just tap the icon on your device like any other app.
High Desert Crime Tracker is a locally produced mobile web app. We've been part of the community in the high desert for over five years, and this project grew from a simple desire to know what was happening nearby.
High Desert Crime Tracker is currently running as a beta release while we work to perfect the system. There may be visible imperfections from time to time as we continue to develop the app. Thank you for your understanding, and thank you for visiting High Desert Crime Tracker!