SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

Body cam implementation and video release times move toward faster transparency, studying the mental health of police officers and first responders, effects of a smaller police budget, police misconduct multi-city comparison, gun safety, pandemic crime, police partnerships with predictive policing companies, crime prediction software, and more... POLICE CONDUCT Iowa City to consider police liaison job to go on mental health calls  (The Gazette) Jersey City’s Quality of Life Task Force Introduces New Office, Promotes Resident Response Center in 2021  (TAPinto.net) Fewer Police, No Parades: The Squeeze on Local Budgets  (Governing) Proposed Virginia bill would require police to release body cam footage within 15 days  (WRIC) see also:  Bill would require every Illinois cop to wear body cameras by 2025 — but will departments comply?  (Journal Star) Stress response of police officers during COVID‐19: A moderated mediation model  (Wiley Online Library) see ...

Facial recognition use by police agencies debated, crime prediction software ineffective, more cities want camera and license plate reader networks, violent crime in St Louis, Kansas City teens fed up with crime, and more... POLICE CONDUCT California DOJ Data Shows Drop In Police Uses Of Force In 2018  (Witness LA) Police dropping 'crime prediction' software… because it's ineffective, not because it's Orwellian  (RT.com) see also:  LAPD pioneered predicting crime with data. Many police don’t think it works  (LA Times) Top 100 Cities for Police Officers  (Safety.com) 8 reasons you may need to leave your departmentThere are many factors other than pay that determine whether an officer chooses to stay with or leave an agency  (PoliceOne.com) Coast Guard crewman jumps onto moving submarine full of drugs  (TODAY) Grand Jury investigates Fresno Police Department for long wait times on 911 calls  (KMPH) 'Something we're not proud of': Fire...

For the last 10 years, SpotCrime has been attempting to access public crime data from South Bend Indiana with no luck. More often than not South Bend has made excuses as to why they are unable to share data. All the while South Bend police department  has been willingly providing data to a paid third party vendor. Allowing a preferential private company better access to public information is not in the interest of transparency . Doing this locks the data in a siloed and controlled environment that can’t be inspected, therefore, reducing accountability. If the press and the public are restricted from counting and sharing the data then how is putting it on a map useful? Back in 2017 SpotCrime was successfully able to get an excel file that included a list of incidents that occurred throughout the day in South Bend. Check out and download the raw data here. When we went to request data again in 2017, we were told their system moved from UCR to NIBRS and could no ...