FARGO (AP) - Police here are not only fighting crime, they're mapping it.

Police are using a crime mapping system to look for patterns and tie crimes together, while also informing the public about what is going on in their neighborhood, said Detective Leo Rognlin, the department's crime analyst.

A map detailing everything from auto thefts and arsons to sexual assaults and homicides can be found on the city's Web site, http://www.cityoffargo.com/Maps/InteractiveCrimePointMapping.aspx.

Mapping out crimes helps the department better allocate resources and can sometimes narrow the field of suspects or corroborate a detective's gut feelings, Lt. Pat Claus said. It also can provide a balance to human instincts.

"When you actually map it out and start looking at it, what you thought may have been connected really (isn't)," he said.

In certain crimes, such as window peeping or thefts, geography means a lot, Claus said.

"We know that a lot of time, peepers don't go far from their residence," he said.

Investigators used crime mapping to help tie together a string of 2005 burglaries committed by a burglar known as "Shoe Boy" for leaving footprints at his crime scenes, Rognlin said.

Tracking complaints and reported incidents also has generated ideas for decreasing problems in the city, such as an effort in August to cut down on traffic accidents, Sgt. Jeff Skuza said. Authorities spent a week focusing on speeding and red-light violations, after studying accident data to see where the problems were.

The West Fargo and Moorhead, Minn., police departments take a different approach to tracking crime. Both departments, which are much smaller than Fargo's 129-member force, rely on their officers to keep tabs on the city.

"We're still small enough that we feel the officers should know what's going on in the whole community," West Fargo Police Capt. Mike Reitan said.

Moorhead police use a similar strategy, with the help of a daily log that is continuously updated, Deputy Chief Bob Larson said.

Information is not shared just within city limits. All three police departments, along with Cass and Clay counties, work together and share information "pretty readily" to deal with problems in the region, Reitan said.

"We all gain by sharing that information," he said.