Resources

I created the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS) to encourage police agencies throughout the world to keep public crime data uniform, simple, and ubiquitous. The standard sets guidelines for making public crime information open and accessible to the public.

There are already methods for agencies to share information among each other like N-Dex, NEIM, GJXDM. But what about sharing information openly with the public?

Currently, Baltimore shares data differently than Baltimore County who shares it differently than Annapolis, MD who shares it differently than Arlington, VA who shares it differently than Dallas, TX who shares it differently than LA who shares it differently than Vancouver, BC who shares it differently than London, England. Until now.

Read more and view the entire standard here.

SpotCrime is not a vendor – we are an independent news agency – which presents an interesting case study behind democratizing the public’s crime data. Check out testimony I’ve worked on and submitted on behalf of SpotCrime.

Read Maryland testimony here.

Read Kansas testimony here.

Wondering how your city or other cities do in terms of transparency with public crime data? I keep an updated list ranking US cities on their access to crime data. Every year, the ranking is updated and new cities added. Included are the most populated cities, the Police Data Initiative participating agencies, and the fifty capital cities.

See the latest ranking here.

I worked with SpotCrime developers to create script with the intention of helping police agencies pull an open crime data file from their RMS/CAD system. The script is called SpotCrime Catapult. It is free of charge to any police agency – the only stipulation being that the file created with SpotCrime Catapult is shared with anyone – the public, press, and even other crime mapping websites!

Contact me for SpotCrime Catapult documentation and information.

A list of resources relating to open crime data and open data in general.

View the list here.