Does open crime data provide some indication to the quality of policing?
The recent controversial encounters with the police and citizens in Ferguson, New York, Cleveland, and now North Charleston raise the question - does the way in which a police agency makes their crime data available determine the the quality of policing? With the exception of Ferguson PD thanks to recent DOJ review , we can’t make claims about the quality of policing for North Charleston, Cleveland, or NYPD. However, we do have enough knowledge to assess the quality of each agency’s stance on open crime data and make some inferences on how this affects public trust. Based on the correspondence we’ve received from police agencies over the years, we think certain agencies may be telegraphing their commitment to community policing by how they release and respond to requests for public data. In Ferguson, SpotCrime was getting open data access for a period of years, however the data stopped two years prior to the shooting of Michael Brown . We do not have...