Crime data transparency Ranking - 50 US Cities

SpotCrime has graded 50 US cities on how transparent they are with crime data.

A 2 grade is an ‘A+, you are awesome!’ - the city is open with their crime data, meaning it follows this criteria:

• Fair and equal access to the data; there are no restrictions on use or sharing of the information
• It’s free; no registrations, licenses, fees, etc are associated with the information
• It’s available in machine readable format or a format capable of automating
• Information is timely and up to date

A 1 grade is an ‘OK, but you can do better’ - the city may publish some sort of crime data feed, but it’s:

• Incomplete (missing part of a location, missing time, etc)
• Out of date (In some cases up to date information is only given to a preferred vendor and everyone else has to wait up to a week to receive similar information)
• The information is in a really hard to read format (.pdf, fax, snail mail, word doc)

A 0 grade is a ‘See me after class and you may get detention for a semester’. This means that the city does not post any feed available to the public. Or, most of the time, the city has given access to a vendor who then places restrictions on the information. Read more about this in this Nieman Lab article and/or this Poynter article.

Below is the grade sheet. Where does your city stand in regards to open data?

City	State	Grade
New York	New York	0
Los Angeles	California	2
Chicago	Illinois	2
Houston	Texas	2
Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	2
Phoenix	Arizona	1
San Antonio	Texas	2
San Diego	California	1
Dallas	Texas	2
San Jose	California	0
Austin	Texas	2
Jacksonville	Florida	1
Indianapolis	Indiana	1
San Francisco	California	2
Columbus	Ohio	2
Fort Worth	Texas	1
Charlotte	North Carolina	1
Detroit	Michigan	1
El Paso	Texas	0
Memphis	Tennessee	1
Boston	Massachusetts	1
Seattle	Washington	2
Denver	Colorado	2
Washington	DC	2
Nashville	Tennessee	2
Baltimore	Maryland	1
Louisville	Kentucky	2
Portland	Oregon	2
Oklahoma City	Oklahoma	1
Milwaukee	Wisconsin	2
Las Vegas	Nevada	0
Albuquerque	New Mexico	1
Tucson	Arizona	1
Fresno	California	1
Sacramento	California	2
Long Beach	California	0
Kansas City	Missouri	2
Mesa	Arizona	1
Virginia Beach	Virginia	1
Atlanta	Georgia	1
Colorado Springs	Colorado	0
Raleigh	North Carolina	2
Omaha	Nebraska	0
Miami	Florida	2
Oakland	California	2
Tulsa	Oklahoma	2
Minneapolis	Minnesota	1
Cleveland	Ohio	1
Wichita	Kansas	2

In cities like Los Angeles, San Antonio, and San Diego (to name a few), SpotCrime can proudly say that we had a hand in keeping open or creating a public crime data feed when the police agency moved to a proprietary system.

Out of these 50 cities, we gave 7 cities a 0 grade. All but one of those 7 cities (New York) use a proprietary vendor who restricts access to the public data. Some of these cities give data to two vendors, but restrict access to everyone else. Las Vegas even has an open data portal, but no crime data is provided.

Here are the 7 cities with a 0 grade:
New York, NY
San Jose, CA
El Paso, TX
Las Vegas, NV
Long Beach, CA
Colorado Springs, CO
Omaha, NE

We’ve been following some recent legislation being put into place in New York that (looks like) it will require the NYPD to release crime data! And, in San Jose, we’ve found that there has been a budget set aside to implement an open data policy. Let’s hope this will include crime data too.

Want to get a sense of where your police department ranks? Send an us inquiry for a free review.

Finally, don’t forget to check out these open data resources and share them with your city:
Civic Commons Open Data Guidelines
8 principles of Open Governemnt Data
opengovernmentinitiative.org
Data as a Public Good
Municipal Open Data Policies

The Sunlight Foundation