With the development of GIS, and advancement of transparency and open data policy over the years, maps have become an increasingly important tool for communication and distribution of crime related information between police departments and the general public. However, current crime maps exhibit major shortcomings stemming from the methods that yield them. Among them, the use of traditional spatial units, i.e., points and areal spatial units in crime maps has long stood and appears to be an overlooked problem. Conversely, research on novel spatial units has been going on for years, and traditional point-style and areal-style symbolization have been criticized for a long time, e.g., for privacy concerns in point-style maps and calculating crime statistics using population in corresponding visualization in areal spatial units. Nonetheless, crime maps produced by police departments of some major Canadian cities are yet to adopt any novel spatial unit. This study proposes a novel spatial unit: the street segment, to address some problems of existing crime maps using traditional point and areal spatial units. Our results suggest that using the street segment as spatial unit to present crime statistics mitigates some shortcomings of current crime maps, like overgeneralization and privacy concerns. It provides opportunities like Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Route Planning and enhances the practical functionality of crime maps by assisting the general public in daily decision-making.