SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

Federal law enforcement requires body cameras causing local Sheriff's offices to pull deputies, police union contracts, access to public police scanners ends in Honolulu, data transparency failures of the Clery Act, ghost guns a problem in Philly, Dallas crime reduction plan working, racial profiling report compliance in Texas, and more... POLICE CONDUCT Minneapolis illegally withholding hundreds of police misconduct files, says lawsuit from public records advocates  (The Star Tribune) KXAN investigation leads to first-ever 100% racial profiling report compliance in Texas  (KXAN) Beaufort cop invited kids to lunch. Then he showed them family’s criminal records  (The Island Packet) Asheville police release list of calls officers will no longer respond to. Move comes in response to dozens of officers leaving police force in past year, officials say  (Wyff4) U.S. Mandates Body Cameras for Federal Law-Enforcement Officers  (Wall Street Journal) see also:  HCSO, ACSO pull deputies from

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. Louis County was r

We’ve updated the SpotCrime Crime Data Transparency Ranking that was featured on GovTech early April 2015 . Let’s start with the good: Dallas, TX - We stand corrected! When the GovTech article was published, we had Dallas at a 1 ranking because their system went down and there was no data available for a while. However, by the time the GovTech article was published their system was up and running again, but we failed to update their ranking. After they reached out to express concern for their ranking we checked into things and rightfully moved them back to a 2! Albuquerque, NM - Moved from a 1 to a 2! ABQ is now OPEN for business! They began publishing an easy to digest feed. Our residents in Albuquerque have been pretty happy about the timely updates we’ve been able to make to their SpotCrime alerts. Pittsburgh, PA - Moved from a 1 to a 2! Pittsburgh began posting data in a machine readable format! Woohoo! Jacksonville, FL - Moved from a 1 to a 2 Jacksonville turned