Crime Data Proves To Be Top Dataset In Cities Across the US

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We came across an infographic by the Sunlight Foundation listing top datasets that drive engagement when published to a city’s open data portal.

Most popular open datasets
Notice anything?

Crime related data is listed not once, but twice!

So, why aren’t more cities publishing crime data openly? 

We’re not sure.

However, whenever we reach out to a police agency to collect data to map on SpotCrime and send out in our free crime alerts, we make sure to ask for open crime data and explain what ‘open’ means. Check out the definition of open data here. 

More importantly, we do not demand exclusivity for the data. Some crime mapping vendors do this.

Socrata, an open data vendor to cities across the nation, notes - “In addition to eliminating technological and usability barriers, it is important to remove legal barriers, such as distribution and copyright restrictions." All of the crime mapping vendors we're aware of have a terms of use on their site restricting the public and the press. Socrata continues "The goal of open data is to take this valuable resource out of government database silos where it sits idle, or at best underutilized, and put it into the hands of people who can unlock its value." And we couldn't agree more.

Does your police agency release their crime data in an open format? If you aren’t sure, reach out to us and we can tell you! Reach out to your police department, too, and ask them to make their crime data available in an open, unrestricted format.

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