About Homicide Watch D.C.
Homicide Watch D.C. is part of a growing network of Homicide Watch sites across the United States. Homicide Watch D.C. was awarded the Knight Public Service Award by the Online News Association in 2012, was named an “Open Gov Champion” by the Sunlight Foundation, and has been covered by publications such as Nieman Journalism Lab, Columbia Journalism Review, The Atlantic and the New York Times.
We use original reporting, primary source documents and social networking to build one of the nation’s most comprehensive public resources on violent crime.
The site relaunched in August 2011, adding a custom database to track homicide cases from crime to conviction, building the area’s most complete public resource for the people who need it most: victim’s families, suspects’ families, and all others affected by violent crime in D.C.
As DC residents, we believe that how people live and die here, and how those deaths are recognized, matters to every one of us. If it matters how someone is killed in Cleveland Park, then it matters how someone is killed in Truxton Circle, Ivy City, Washington Highlands or Georgetown. If we are to understand violent crime in our community, the losses of every family, in every neighborhood must be recognized. And the outcome of every trial — be it a conviction or an acquittal — must be recorded.
Who We Are
Chris Amico is a journalist and web developer with experience in local newspapers, national news organizations and media start-ups. He is the co-founder of Homicide Watch. His work focuses on combining data and narrative journalism to find and tell newer and better stories.
Laura Amico is co- founder of Homicide Watch. Laura was an inaugural Nieman-Berkman Fellow in Journalism Innovation at Harvard. Her distinctions include fellowships with the Online News Association’s MJ Bear program, Harry F. Guggenheim Symposium and the Knight News Entrepreneurs Bootcamp.
Email us and follow @HomicideWatch on Twitter.
A brief visual tour of some of the features we debuted in Aug. 2011 is below.
