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Showing posts with the label crime map

How To Make Crime Data Public - A Flow Chart

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Need help making crime data openly available in your town? Let us know .

Crime Around Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Events

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A lot of people are wondering who is the lesser of two evils - Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? They both seem to fall into the same bucket when it comes to transparency . Their views on crime and safety differ. Read about Trump’s stance on crime and safety here . Read about Hillary’s stance on crime and safety here . Political opinions aside, we decided to look at the crime around events candidates have held since they received their party's nomination. We couldn't draw too many conclusions. Not every police agency reports data, and those that do do not follow any specific reporting standards. However, we did notice: Trump has held more rallies (30) than Clinton (13). Trump tends to visit cities/areas with a smaller population density than Clinton. This gives him a higher chance of being in a city that is not open with crime data (smaller cities do not have the resources of the larger cities). Obviously the Secret Service would not allow a rally to t

Is Your Police Department Telegraphing Quality?

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There are many problems plaguing police community relations right now. Running SpotCrime, it is something I think about often in terms of improving trust between the public and the police so that we all focus on the target of reducing crime instead of pointing fingers at each other. We identify this as improving the trust quotient between law enforcement and the community. I often want to draw inferences about transparency and the quality of policing. Truthfully, we have not explored the data in terms of finding anything statistical about this. Most of our experience is anecdotal. Intuitively, I think we can all agree that if a police department is making a sincere effort to be transparent with the public they are moving in the right direction.  We’ve seen crime data transparency within police agencies develop in a couple of different ways throughout the years. There are some agencies who still do not make an effort to be open and transparent with crime data, but typically i