Don’t Let Your Police Department Upgrade Out of Transparency

Updates have been made to the SpotCrime ‘Live’ Crime Data Transparency Ranking list.

Only 1 city was upgraded to a 2 ranking - Baltimore. They added a calls for service and arrest data feeds after the Freddie Grey protests.

5 cities were downgraded.

The recurring reason for the decrease in transparency across the country?

Police system ‘upgrades’.

The new year has brought dozens of RMS/CAD/database upgrades to police departments nationwide. It’s great to see agencies embracing new technology, however, these new upgrades are knocking public access to crime information offline.

Boston, MA - 2 to a 0 

BPD is no longer updating the open data feed due to RMS upgrade. No timeline has been given as to when the feed will be available again.

Phoenix, AZ - 2 to a 1 

The Phoenix RMS upgrade knocked a weekly public file offline and dramatically decreased the the timeliness and quality of the data.

St. Louis County, MO - 2 to a 0 

St. Louis County was recently added to the list because the County encompasses the City of St. Louis. St. Louis County started at a 2. However, after system updates to their County arcGIS system, the data feed went offline and has yet to be restored. They’re now at a 0.

Honolulu, HI - 2 to a 1

Honolulu is no longer updating the crime data feed on the Honolulu open data site. There is still data available, but it’s not machine readable and really hard to use.

KCMO - 2 to a 0 to a 2 

KCMO data feed didn’t go offline because of a system upgrade (we think). We are under the impression the KCMO legal department had to review the information that the open data portal had been releasing for about a year now. It’s important to note that while the open data portal was offline, a 3rd party proprietary mapping service was still allowed to have access to data. KCMO recently restored the feed, so we moved them back to a 2.

There are more examples not on our list.

Kalamazoo, MI 

Open access to crime data went offline when Kalamazoo Police Department redesigned their website. The department noted that the application previously being used is ‘now hosted in a cloud (off-site) environment that does not interface with local Public Safety data systems’.

Upgrading to the cloud is definitely 21st century technology. However, simultaneously upgrading systems while removing open access to crime information is not 21st century policing.

Licking County, OH 

Licking County Sheriff's Office used to provide a crime data file to anyone who asked. Right now, that file is offline due to a system upgrade. The police agency is equally as frustrated as SpotCrime and SpotCrime users for being kicked offline and have let us know that they are 'at the mercy of their vendor' and the vendor is 'very slow to respond to my inquiries for assistance'.

Collier County, FL
*EDIT 2/23/16: Collier County began posting the file to their website again a couple of days after this blogpost was published and shared via social media. Way to go CCSO! 

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office used to make a CAD data file available on their website for anyone to download.  The Collier County Sheriff’s Office recent system ‘upgrade’ removed the ability for the agency to create the file. 

The CCSO's CAD file that is no longer available after the 'upgrade'

Currently, a formal FOIA request must be made in order to receive the same information that was once being provided for free to the public daily. Any costs associated with creating the file are also passed on to the public. We've been quoted upwards of $280 (not including clerical time) for only 2 weeks worth of data. This is a step backward in transparency in Collier County.

We estimate the cost for creating a program to make data public in an equal and fair format with no restrictions to be less than $2,000.

As technologies get faster and more robust, there’s a tendency to add complexity to systems. For transparency purposes, we suggest keeping it simple. It is just data. Particularly, non-identifiable crime data should be as portable as possible. If agencies are having trouble sharing with the public with a new upgrade, there’s a likelihood it is not being shared effectively with other agencies.

It’s not clear how or why ‘upgrades’ remove features like public reporting - especially after the creation of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing in 2015 and recommendations put in place by the Police Data Initiative for better and transparent data sharing. A public reporting option should be one of the features sought after by police agencies when upgrading systems. Ask your police agency to use 21st century technology, but don’t let your police agency upgrade out of transparency and neglect 21st century policing tactics.