Responding to reader requests about the Homicide Report

A few weeks ago, we asked readers what changes you would like to see on the Homicide Report. We heard from many of you, which is great, and we wanted to let you know what changes are already underway and what is planned.

One of the overwhelming requests you had was for photos of victims. One person wrote: "WE WANT PHOTOS!!! Please provide photos for as many victims as you can."

Photos can be key to humanizing victims on the site, and we're working to obtain as many as we can, from a variety of sources: The DMV, families and elsewhere. If you have an unaltered photo (no Instagram filters, please) of someone who was killed, please email it to us with your permission to publish it, along with information about who took the photo and when.

Many readers also requested the return of the photo gallery. We're looking at ways to bring that page back to present photos of victims in a way that's creative and easy-to-browse. 

Some changes we've already made are under-the-hood tweaks that should make it easier for you to explore the coroner's data and reporting we've compiled over the years. The first thing we've done is to compress homicide and neighborhood data. This can save several seconds of page load time, especially when loading all homicides. We hope longtime readers have already noticed the site loading faster.

One of the more visible changes coming soon will be improvements to the map. The large circles (the homicide "clusters" you're used to seeing) were used to deal with browser limitations when we relaunched the Homicide Report as a database in January 2014. Since then, technological advances have made it possible to depict the location of killings more accurately.

The new version of the map will represent each homicide as a single point, instead of as a cluster with dozens or hundreds of others. A number of other simplifications will make searching the website easier. 

Next on the priority list is improving the mobile site. Readers have pointed out that a lot of information available to readers using desktop or laptop computers is missing when you access the site from a smartphone, tablet or other mobile device. For example, the mobile view doesn't include how many homicides are shown on the map nor does it allow filtering and searching. We know that more than half of our readers are on smartphones and other mobile devices, so we're committed to giving you a better mobile experience.

Other readers asked for us to identify the responding law enforcement agency (e.g., L.A. County Sheriff's Department, LAPD, Long Beach Police Department, etc.) for each homicide. We have that information, and it will be available to readers soon.

Now for the bad news. Readers made some requests that, although fascinating, would be impractical or even impossible to implement and ensure accuracy.

One of those was an idea to create "a map of all the 'alleged and presumed' gangs through out LA County starting with South LA." Our current map is based on U.S. Census-defined city and neighborhood boundaries and street addresses that come from public records. Gang territories are a different thing, of course. Gang boundaries change and are subject to opinion. There may be creative ways to track and map gang territories, but our focus, at least for now, is going to remain on the victims of homicide.

Another request has actually long been a goal of ours -- the ability to comprehensively follow cases through the investigation and prosecution process.

When a person is killed, the coroner assigns a case number. The investigative agency also assigns a case number, but the information is not easily pieced together to facilitate tracking it through the criminal justice system. When the case heads to court, yet another case number is assigned -- with the defendant as the focus, not the victim -- further complicating the process.

That said, readers may have noticed more follow-ups in recent months. We have redoubled our efforts to track cases from homicide, to arrest, to trial. We always welcome your help. If you know about a case that we can update, let us know.

And that goes for any topic. You, the readers, help make this site what it is. Always feel free to get in touch.

-- Armand Emamdjomeh