SpotCrime Transparency Ranking: June 2017 Update

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The open crime data landscape is changing for the better. More and more cities are beginning to publish their crime data openly. We are seeing a shift away from data silos and move toward open data feeds and portals across the country.

With advantages of transparency far outranking disadvantages (if any), hundreds of agencies are making their data openly accessible. At this point, it doesn’t make much sense why any police agency still isn’t on board with open data.

The SpotCrime Transparency Ranking has been updated to reflect the changes.

If you have any questions about any of the rankings, or if you’d like to see a city ranked that’s not on the list, please let us know! 


Boston, MA: 0 to 2
They were a 0 in our last update because they upgraded their RMS system, but in the process of upgrading, their public access point to open crime data was kicked offline. When public access to data gets turned off because of an upgrade, we refer to it as ‘upgrading out of transparency’. However, Boston was able to successfully launch a new data portal called Analyze Boston that included a crime data feed!

Hampton, VA: 0 to 2
Hampton has always had a 0 ranking, until about a month ago! We had been trying to get them to open up crime data for a couple of years and recently the department’s attitude toward technology has changed (for the better) and they’ve begun utilizing open crime data to be more transparent with the public.

Las Vegas, NV: 1 to a 2
In the past Las Vegas has been a 1 because they were publishing data (SpotCrime had a feed),, but we couldn’t manage to get them to share the feed with the public and press (or anyone who asked for it) - until now!

Minneapolis, MN: 1 to a 2
Our frustration with Minneapolis has been that even after their roll out of an open data policy and an open data portal, they were only updating crime data about every 6 months while their crime mapping vendor received up to date information. We were connecting and reconnecting with them over a period of about 3 years. It was a big sigh of relief to see they were able to finally automate their feed to the open data portal!

Kansas City, KS: 1 to a 0
We’ve learned that Kansas City, KS has the technical capabilities to be open and transparent with crime data, they’re just choosing not to be transparent with their community. SpotCrime was mapping Kansas City, KS for a couple of years. Last year, Kansas City turned off the public crime data feed to everyone except their proprietary crime mapping vendor. Interestingly, this was around the same time that their neighbor city Kansas City, MO started publishing crime data to an open data portal.

Aurora, CO: 0
We’ve added Aurora, CO to our list not only because of no public access point to crime data, but because of the extra complexity the city uses to respond to FOIA requests. When we submitted a FOIA for crime data, we found that the only way they respond to requests is by saving machine readable data (excel file, csv, file, etc) as pdfs. Then, they place the PDFs onto a CD and then snail mail the CD. We eventually got them to email us the files, but because of the complexity behind requesting the data, we stopped requesting data. Throughout the process, we learned SpotCrime isn’t the only entity to run into FOIA issues in Aurora - the city was printing out spreadsheets onto actual paper and snail mailing it to a PBS reporter.

El Paso, TX: 0
This is another city that, like Aurora, purposefully slows down access to public information. What is most frustrating in El Paso is they were emailing the data for free. But, after a ‘policy change’ they began snail mailing and charging for data. The good news is we are mapping crime from the El Paso County Sheriff.

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