SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

Early intervention systems to reduce police violence, KKK embedded in Florida law enforcement, crisis response team achieve 70% reduction in people taken into custody, gun violence, pediatric gun violence costs, more guns than ever stolen from cars in Nashville, predictive policing, spy tech in Boston, DNA tests, Dallas roll back open data, restorative justice, and more... POLICE CONDUCT Early Intervention Systems (EIS) may be effective in reducing police violence and other forms of misconduct. However, there is scant research finding direct, causal effects of such systems on officer performance outcomes  (CCJ Task Force on Policing) We Tracked What Happens to Police After They Use Force on Protesters  (ProPublica) KKK members embedded in Florida law enforcement An Army veteran was undercover with the KKK for 10 years as part of an FBI investigation.  (First Coast News) New law named for Vanessa Guillén will revamp military investigations into sexual assault, harassment ...

Police reform, police conduct, morale low in Boston, violent crime increase to stall criminal justice reform, clearance rates low in some cities, Ring to make police requests public, Citizen employees raise concern, private control over policing reduces transparency, Houston's transparency hub, and more... POLICE CONDUCT 'We’re not afraid of transparency': Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams discusses reform in department  (12News) Columbus Police reducing property crime responses to keep more officers on the street  (ABC6OnYourSide) ‘Morale Is Very Low,’ Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association President Says  (CBS Local Boston) Police Chief to Plead Guilty After Allegedly Threatening 'Fake Arrest' Over Negative Facebook Post  (Newsweek) ‘I’ve lost count.’ Notorious Opa-locka police sergeant German Bosque fired for seventh time  (Miami Herald) Orange County deputy suspended over TikTok videos  (Click Orlando) Internal affairs document shows verbal discipline f...

Addressing the inaccuracies of predictive AI in policing, Boston looks at new way behind parking tickets, ceasefire in Baltimore working?, changing course in addressing overdoses, and more... POLICE CONDUCT This Tiny Louisiana Police Force Is a National Leader in Taking Guns From Abusers  (The Trace) St. Paul police adopt policy changing how emergency calls are prioritized   (KMSP) D.C. issues record $1 billion in traffic and parking tickets, AAA calls it 'predatory'  (WJLA) see also:  Boston parking proposal: Adjust tickets based on driver's income  (WCVB) Video: Orlando Cops Arrest Crying Six-Year-Old Girl One of the officers was fired after arresting two six-year-olds in one day.  (Reason.com) LAPD not giving up on data-driven policing, even after scrapping controversial program  (CBS News) CRIME RATE Internal documents, whistleblowers point to alleged underreporting of crime by DC Police  (WUSA) With initiative to curb fear of ...

Amazon has narrowed down the locations for their second headquarters to a list of 20 finalists  out of the 238 cities and regions that applied. The winning city could get up to 50,000 high-paying jobs and $5 billion in investment, boosting the local economy. Amazon's requirements were metropolitan areas with a population greater than one million and the ability to attract and keep strong technical talent.  SpotCrime is mapping crime in almost every major city in the US. We took a look at the 20 finalists  to see if we were mapping crime in cities appealing to Amazon.  We are aggregating good data from all by 1 city! This is good for Amazon - we believe a city with great police data transparency means better community relations and an open feedback loop. Cities who are transparent with crime data are typically transparent with other types of data, like transit or financial data, which can make addressing the growing pains that come with building their a mas...

The open crime data landscape is changing for the better . More and more cities are beginning to publish their crime data openly . We are seeing a shift away from data silos and move toward open data feeds and portals across the country. With advantages of transparency far outranking disadvantages (if any), hundreds of agencies are making their data openly accessible. At this point, it doesn’t make much sense why any police agency still isn’t on board with open data. The SpotCrime Transparency Ranking has been updated to reflect the changes. If you have any questions about any of the rankings, or if you’d like to see a city ranked that’s not on the list, please let us know !  Boston, MA: 0 to 2 They were a 0 in our last update because they upgraded their RMS system, but in the process of upgrading, their public access point to open crime data was kicked offline. When public access to data gets turned off because of an upgrade, we refer to it as ‘ upgrading ou...

Updates have been made to the SpotCrime ‘Live’ Crime Data Transparency Ranking list. Only 1 city was upgraded to a 2 ranking - Baltimore. They added a calls for service and arrest data feeds after the Freddie Grey protests. 5 cities were downgraded. The recurring reason for the decrease in transparency across the country? Police system ‘upgrades’. The new year has brought dozens of RMS/CAD/database upgrades to police departments nationwide. It’s great to see agencies embracing new technology, however, these new upgrades are knocking public access to crime information offline. Boston, MA - 2 to a 0  BPD is no longer updating the open data feed due to RMS upgrade . No timeline has been given as to when the feed will be available again. Phoenix, AZ - 2 to a 1   The Phoenix  RMS upgrade knocked a weekly public file offline and dramatically decreased the the timeliness and quality of the data. St. Louis County, MO - 2 to a 0   St....

We’ve updated our Crime Data Transparency Ranking table. Check out the new table below and make sure to check out our previous blog for information on how we rank each city. We’re keeping a live table available to view any time we make updates  here . Static list of SpotCrime Crime Data Transparency rankings. View a live list here . Way to go Boston and New York City! These are the two cities we happily upgraded. Boston now posts their crime data on their open data site - they’ve been upgraded from a 1 to a 2. NYC is now publishing the NYPD Crime Map. They went from giving out almost no information to giving out monthly data. Since the data is monthly and there’s no true download option for all of the data, we’ve only upgraded them to a 1 (previously a 0). Colorado Springs doesn’t have an all-inclusive feed, but they are producing a crime blotter. We’ve moved them from a 0 to a 1. We’ve added New Orleans (NOLA) to our list. They’ve started posting data on t...