5 Awesome Reasons to Open Up Crime Data in Your City

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The low hanging fruit for police agencies in the open data movement is opening up incident based RMS/CAD data. Typically RMS/CAD data is available, it’s just not in an open, machine readable format yet. 

Here are 5 great reasons to make your police incident data open - meaning it’s made available in a machine readable format for anyone to collect, use, and share.

5) Proactively answer FOIAs
By being proactive and making data available in an open format, it will create a one-stop shop for FOIA requests - lessening the time, money, and resources it takes to respond to hundreds of FOIA requests for the same information.

4) Apps! 
And not to mention FREE apps! Making the data openly available creates more opportunities for entrepreneurs to do something useful with the information. Something a police agency may not have the time or resources to commit their time to or afford. Check out the free SpotCrime apps for iPhone, Android, and Kindle Fire.

3) The Police Data Initiative
The White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing rolled out with the Police Data Initiative in May. Since then, 24 agencies have announced their participation in the initiative already! Making RMS/CAD data is a great first step toward helping your police agency fall in line with other agencies across the US.

2) Improve Your Police Department
The data that’s being made open and available can be used for internal data driven reviews and analysis improving operations and accountability within the organization.

1) It’s all about the Community
Releasing crime data openly will give the community the ability to peek inside the day to day operations of the department. The data can not only help create dialog with the community, but will support community based events like watch groups or hackathons. It will also create an open feedback loop creating a more informed community, a higher level of transparency and trust within the community.

Does your city already release crime data in an open and unrestricted format? Let us know! We'll get it mapped on SpotCrime. Stay aware, stay safe!


This post was inspired by the Open Data in Public Safety:Rise of the Police Data Initiative Socrata Webinar.

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