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Interactive Map Reveals the Crime Clusters in Hillsborough County

Brandon, East Tampa, and USF Area lead the stats
Posted at 7:19 PM, May 05, 2017
and last updated 2017-05-05 19:19:34-04

Using the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Crime Search Map, we uncovered crime clusters in Brandon, Southeast Tampa, and the USF area.

We drilled down even more to learn which crimes are happening the most often and where. Then we hit the road to find the people it's affecting.

"The people that's doing it are the people that don't give a damn," said Donnie Malone who is a 63-year-old veteran.

He lives in a area known as "Suitcase city," near USF.

"My mom said if a man don't work he going to steal," Malone said.

According to the crime search map, Mr. Malone's street sits in the middle of a cluster of burglaries. More than a hundred of them have happened in the area in the past year.

"You got drug addicts, you got prostitution. When you have prostitution and drugs you going to have crime," he said.

Our next stop was Brandon, where the crime map showed fraud cases are off the charts. More than a hundred have taken place in the past year.

So why so many fraud cases in Brandon? We dug deeper into the data and found most of them are happening inside the Brandon Mall.

We also looked into arson. Which lead us to a palm river neighborhood in East Tampa. Three arsons happened there in the past year.  

And in the same 33619 zip code, the most dangerous crime cluster of all was murder. Four of them in the past 10 months.

And Mr. Malone's theory about crime breeding other kinds of crime is backed up by the numbers.

When we looked at all the crime categories the area between Fowler Avenue and Bearss has the highest concentration of crime compared to any other area in Hillsborough County.