Why Police Agencies Should Follow the Open Data Model
We’ve be arguing for open crime data since our launch in 2007. Now that the open data movement has picked momentum, we are hoping to see more and more police agencies and cities around the country embrace the open data model with public crime data. This post has been inspired by many articles we’ve read recently. Check out our Open Data board on Pinterest for more resources. What is Open Crime Data? Open crime data should include all crime related information that is not subject to privacy laws like victim’s names or juvenile information. It shouldn’t be a requirement by police agencies to fill out a lengthy FOIA to get public information. Instead, it should be released by agencies in a timely manner (like daily) instead of monthly or quarterly or annually like UCR reports. A good solution would be to post the information in a machine readable format on the agency’s website. For example, Philadelphia is has an API, Baltimore uses an open data portal, and Los Angeles has a crime da