SpotCrime’s Mission to Democratize Crime Data
In addition to working to become one of the largest crime mapping and alert systems in the world, we also advocate for open, equal, and fair access to crime data. We've interacted with thousands of police agencies over the past 10+ years which has given us incredible insight into different ways police departments allow access to public crime information. In our attempt to collect data en masse, we strive to make sure data is available not only to SpotCrime, but to anyone who wants access. In turn, a democratized footprint of crime data has grown and continues to grow across the nation.
What does SpotCrime do?
SpotCrime collects public crime data from police agencies across the US and delivers it to the public via crime maps and email alerts.In the process of this mass aggregation of public information, we’ve become a sort of crime data transparency watchdog. If you see crime data for your city on SpotCrime, that typically means your police department is transparent with crime data.
What kind of data does SpotCrime map?
We ask for the most common datasets available within police agencies nationwide - RMS and CAD data. This data is also known as a ‘crime blotter’. The crime blotter can trace its existence back to 1800 France when lawyer and amateur statistician André-Michel Guerry created moral statistics maps of France showing property and personal crimes.
In its simplest form, the data is a ‘high level’ list of crime related incidents occurring throughout a day within the jurisdiction of the responding police agency. Every police agency who takes crime seriously is looking at this data daily. It is the data that lays the groundwork for policing programs like hot spot policing and community policing, and is regularly shared with neighborhood block watches.
This data is so common it falls under the protection of FOIA laws across all 50 states. It’s data that is not only released by police agencies in the US, but hundreds of other countries as well. And for that reason, we estimate it is one of the easiest accessible data sets to access across the world.
Fundamental Transparency
RMS/CAD data shows the daily hard work a police agency logs for the day. It shows how an agency is working to create public safety and reduce crime by giving an insight into how public resources are being deployed, and to where and what kind of events resources are being applied.
We’ve been at this for almost 15 years now. We have interacted with thousands of police departments. We’ve found that as common as an RMS/CAD log is that, unfortunately, not all police agencies make it easy to access this public information.
This happens for a variety of reasons - none of which make complete sense from a transparency or technology perspective - but in 2020 it is still happening.
SpotCrime’s goal is for this crime data to be made public to everyone. This kind of data is fundamental to transparency within policing, community relationships, and the continual improvement of fairness and equality.
Hidden in plain sight
Whenever a police agency seeks to reduce transparency, we often wonder the motivation, and how any reduction in transparency helps the public.
Police agencies should have a ‘citizens first’ philosophy when thinking about everything, including informative public data. However, some police agencies find themselves creating arbitrary barriers to accessing this basic crime information.
Some police agencies can hide behind their vendors claiming the vendor has exclusive control of data, or that the vendor software doesn’t allow them to pull public data from the database. In some cases, like in Harford County (MD), Columbus (GA), Indianapolis (IN), they allow the vendor to place restrictions on any public facing data made available on the internet. Any exclusive backdoor agreement like this inherently and intrinsically harms transparency and the public. Allowing a private company first access and ownership over public data over the public and press destroys transparency. There are many ways a vendor can exploit this kind of relationship, especially because big business only has their bottom line in mind, not the public or transparency.
Some police agencies can hide behind FOIA, requiring a FOIA request in order to access the information and then deny FOIA requests for this fundamental information - in Tennessee agencies will not provide this data to anyone who does not have a TN ID or proof of residency. Another example is Conroe (TX). After years of providing a blotter, Conroe Police department recently claimed the data does not exist. Gwinnett County (GA) recently began sending invoices for FOIA requests for their crime blotter after it had been free for over 5 years. The FOIA law in either state was not amended to hinder access, only the attitude towards democracy and transparency of the police agency changed. Our democracy is superior to other forms of government. Our laws are continuously amended and rewritten to head us in a direction of fairness and equality. When public servants serve themselves or the institution over the public, democracy is lost.
Some police agencies can hide behind false notions of public safety, claiming releasing this data will scare residents, or it will harm victims. In reality all hiding a crime blotter from the public does is help criminals go unnoticed and removes the ability for the public to hold police accountable. Pasco County removed access to their CAD log in 2019 citing a new victim law passed in 2018 in Florida known as Marsy’s Law. In September of 2020 Tampa Bay Times wrote about a policing program that encourages Pasco County Sheriff deputies to harass potential criminals. The Times obtained those now hidden from public CAD logs documenting Sheriff deputies showing up at the same house 21 times within four months. The investigation begs the questions - Did the Pasco County Sheriff’s office remove public access to the CAD log because of Marsy’s Law or did they remove access to the CAD log in order to stifle access to information that points out an unfair policing strategy?
An ally and advocate to transparency
In a time when the press is being decimated every year by the ever changing tech economy, SpotCrime hopes to counteract that loss of accountability through transparency and providing crime data access to the public.
Since we were founded in 2007 we’ve seen hundreds of police agencies begin to release crime data openly. With over 18,000+ police agencies in the US there is still a long way to go. In an effort to foster transparency and police community relationships in the current climate surrounding police, our hope is more police agencies will embrace open crime data. Especially because in 2020 producing a simple spreadsheet of yesterday's police activity should be a cake walk for any department.
We would like to note that SpotCrime is a selfish for-profit actor in the arena of crime data access. We want the data for our business. In doing so it makes us value informing the public and drives our attempt at reducing criminal activity through police data transparency. We are committed to a ‘do no harm’ approach in this process, making sure the data is not hidden in plain sight to residents by:
- Not asking for exclusivity to the data. We do not create any special arrangements for exclusive data access to SpotCrime.
- Helping every agency produce data for the public directly - preferably a spreadsheet or data feed that is available directly on the police department's website for anyone to download, access, and re-share. Our SOCS and SpotCrime Catapult were created in a direct effort to aid agencies in producing open crime data.
- Not sensationalizing, embellishing, or misconstruing the data in any way. We do not want to create fear or cause harm.
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