Petersburg, VA Gives Monopoly Control to Vendor Crime Mapping Website
Earlier this month, the Petersburg Virginia Police put out an announcement that they were allowing the public to view crime data on a paid vendor's website. This is a huge step forward for the city because access to data like this has never been available before. The plus is now Petersburg citizens and the press can look at the crime data. The minus is the city supported vendor restricts sharing and publication of the information. The classic “you can look at the information, but don’t share it, independently tabulate it, or report on the data” because that would violate the vendor’s business interests. As a result, crimes can’t be shared on social media and the press can’t use the information for reporting. SpotCrime has been asking for an open data feed for this kind of data for at least five years . Each time, we’ve been told that the technology was not available to make the data public. Nearby agencies, however, have been doing this for years. Meanwhile, the Pet