SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

Right to carry leads to increase in crime, juvenile crime rates, mass incarceration and the 1994 crime bill, license plate readers lead to crime decrease, and more... POLICE CONDUCT Task Force Focuses On Guns And Domestic Violence Convictions  (WCBE) Wilmington’s crime rate has soared — so has its police spending  (TowardsDataScience.com) NIBRS (National Incident-Based Reporting System) is a powerful tool for law enforcement. But for agencies transitioning to NIBRS, the system presents new challenges around data collection and reporting.  (Mark43) San Francisco police union calls on chief to resign after raid on reporter's home  (NBC News) Private property seized by Jackson police isn't being reported as required by law  (Clarion Ledger) Police misconduct may spread like a contagion, new study suggests  (ScienceMag.org) CRIME RATE Raw Data: Mass Incarceration and the 1994 Crime Bill  (MotherJones) Rape is the least investigated violent crime in America  (WJLA

UPDATE: We are now getting crime data from Irving, TX! SpotCrime is required to FOIA this information each time we want updates. The Irving PD is giving this information for free (via an automatically updated feed) to a private vendor that restricts how the public and press can use the information, but they do not require the vendor to send a FOIA request each time they'd like to update the data on their website. Ultimately, we would like to see this data published to an open data portal. We are not sure when or if this will be accomplished. We'd like to note that we've paid for programming for the city to pull this data and to set up automatic updates, similar to how the department is automatically updating their third party private vendor, however, Chief Spivey and the city have elected not to set up automatic updates. Instead, they are making a city employee manually pull and send the data each time it is requested. We believe this to be an intentional waste of time a

For the last 10 years, SpotCrime has been attempting to access public crime data from South Bend Indiana with no luck. More often than not South Bend has made excuses as to why they are unable to share data. All the while South Bend police department  has been willingly providing data to a paid third party vendor. Allowing a preferential private company better access to public information is not in the interest of transparency . Doing this locks the data in a siloed and controlled environment that can’t be inspected, therefore, reducing accountability. If the press and the public are restricted from counting and sharing the data then how is putting it on a map useful? Back in 2017 SpotCrime was successfully able to get an excel file that included a list of incidents that occurred throughout the day in South Bend. Check out and download the raw data here. When we went to request data again in 2017, we were told their system moved from UCR to NIBRS and could no long

There is a huge US debate currently unraveling on whether police body camera footage is public under Freedom of Information Act laws (FOIA). Public access to body cam footage is necessary for obvious reasons. For one, to create a certain level of transparency. Having a recording of actual events can build a reliable and accurate portrayal of what actually occurred instead of relying on anecdotal evidence. Body cam footage encourages the reduction of unnecessary use of force and misconduct . It has showed the Baltimore police planting evidence , the the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police shooting a man with his arms in the air as well as the unnecessary arrest and use of force on a Salt Lake City nurse.  It has also helped convictions like this criminal who shot a police officer four times . It has displayed chaos during events like the Las Vegas shooting, and given a look into the selfless acts of police officers like these two Atlanta officers who rescued people from a burni

Children and gun violence, Milwaukee Police review halted by DOJ, Equifax will probably get away with it, secret algorithms decide criminal trials, IoT and AI transform police, and more... POLICE CONDUCT Cops weigh in: How police agencies are handling policy and training in the video age (PoliceOne.com) After nurse’s arrest, Utah lawmakers will draft a bill that clarifies when police can draw someone’s blood (Salt Lake Tribune) U.S. Department of Justice halts ongoing review of Milwaukee Police Department (JSOnline.com) How Texas Turned the Page on Police Reform (TheCrimeReport.org) CRIME RATE Experts: Murder Rate Appears to Have Stopped Rising (New York Magazine) Why Equifax Executives Will Get Away With the Worst Data Breach in History (Fortune) See also This former hedge fund guy is a one-man nonprofit investigating some of America’s shadiest companies (Nieman Lab) Almost two dozen kids are shot every day in the U.S. (WaPo) Seven Days Of Her

Confidence in police is back, changing Miranda rights may be in the future, solving US gun violence, qualities of successful open data, FOIA turns 51, and more... POLICE CONDUCT Policing and Public Health—Strategies for Collaboration (JAMA Network) Slain NYPD officer 'died a patriot,' mayor says at funeral (ABC) See Also: Police Blast Judge After Man Tried to Steal Officer's Gun at Precinct is Released (NBCNewYork) Confidence in Police Back at Historical Average (Gallup) Change Miranda rights, University of Utah professors say, because they’re ‘handcuffing the cops’ (Salt Lake Tribune) Judge slams Oakland leaders in police sex scandal (SFGate) Federal grand jury indicts Baltimore police officers on additional robbery charges (Baltimore Sun) Connecticut Just Banned Civil Forfeiture Without A Criminal Conviction (Forbes) See also: Civil asset forfeiture hits poor people hardest (TribLive) CRIME RATE ‘Bridgegate’ Mastermind Avoids Prison Sente

Presidential Executive Orders on crime, civil asset forfeiture, price of police public records requests varies, police tech trends, and more... POLICE CONDUCT Trump signs executive orders he says will crack down on cartels, violence toward cops (NY Daily News) Presidential Executive Order on a Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety (WhiteHouse.gov) Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking (WhiteHouse.gov) Sheriffs Still Looking for Clarity on Deportation (PewTrusts.org) ‘I can’t breathe’: Video shows deputies pepper-spraying man in a restraint chair (Washington Post) Civil asset forfeiture creates perverse incentives that can cost you your property. (USNews.com) CRIME RATE Police Chiefs to Trump: Cut Crime, Prisons (TheCrimeReport.org) Authorities Hope To Avoid Knee-Jerk Reaction To Crime Stats (NPR) San Diego crime report s

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

A ‘release to one, release to all’ federal initiative pilot program will be rolled out in the next 6 months by a handful of federal agencies. Under the initiative any member of the public will presumably have access to the result of almost any FOIA request to the participating agencies. A few journalists have expressed concern over the idea , some in fear investigative stories will be harder to write, others concerned that the public will now have access to a every single FOIA they file. Some journalists suggested a small head start for the original FOIA requester would be fair. This line of thinking doesn’t resonate well with the premise of open data. Especially open crime data. However, this thinking is similar to what is happening with crime data and crime mapping vendors. Crime mapping vendors across the country are regularly granted access to a more up-to-date crime data feed than the public. In Durham, NC the vendor gets a more up-to-date feed than the Du