SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

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

We get this question all of the time from SpotCrime users - what is the different between call data and police recorded ?  Here's a brief explanation of the two. 911 Call Data Departments across the country have different names for 911 call data.  It can range from ‘911 call data’ to ‘calls for service’ to ‘CAD data’ and many more. 911 call data includes any data pulled from a department’s CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) system. Typical CAD companies used by departments include Intergraph , Spillman , SunGard , Tiburon , USA-Software , and New World Systems . 911 call data includes any call into a police department that requires action by an officer. It is the raw, immediate data that represents the first record of an incident.  Many police departments - like Dallas , Tulsa , Columbus , San Antonio, Hillsborough County , and Tampa (to name a few) - have started to release their CAD data in an open feed format available to the public. A benefit of 911 call data is that it is