Hey Batgirl, I’ve been tinkering with a color‑coded grid system that could turn crime data into a visual map—kind of like a story in squares. Think it might help you spot patterns faster?

I’ll outline the system in three quick steps. First, pick a base color palette—think low‑contrast, like teal, coral, mustard, navy, and olive. Assign each crime type a unique hue: assault in teal, burglary in coral, vandalism in mustard, theft in navy, and drug activity in olive. Second, overlay a 10×10 grid over the city map, each cell 1 km². When a crime happens, drop a small dot of its color into the corresponding cell. Third, after a week, you’ll see clusters of the same color popping up, and if a cell shows a mix of colors, that’s a mixed‑crime hotspot. We can run a 48‑hour test with the data you have, then I’ll tweak the colors and cell size until the heatmap feels intuitive. How does that sound for a start?

I don’t have a real crime log on hand, but I can sketch a tiny sample so you can see how the grid would work. Think of each row as a different street intersection, each column as a time slot. Here’s a 4×4 mini‑table (colors in brackets): | Time | 08‑10 | 10‑12 | 12‑14 | 14‑16 | |------|-------|-------|-------|-------| | 1st St | Assault (teal) | Theft (navy) | | Burglary (coral) | | 2nd Ave | | Vandalism (mustard) | Assault | | | 3rd Rd | | | | Drug (olive) | | 4th Ln | Theft | | Vandalism | Assault | Drop a tiny dot of the crime’s color into the cell it belongs to, then you’ll get a heat‑like pattern that pops up across the grid. Once you’ve fed the real numbers into the same layout, you’ll see if the hot spots match your patrol observations. Let me know when you’re ready to play with a full‑sized sheet, and we can tweak the hues or the grid size to make the visual clues sharper.