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by jasonlotito 1367 days ago
Seems pretty obvious from the page:

> Our mission is to make data from every U.S. police agency accessible via a single public resource.

More precisely:

> There are over 18,000 police organizations, and each has a unique way to publish information.

i.e. Police are publishing data? Let's organize it and make it easily accessible.
1 comments
s1artibartfast 1367 days ago
I am curious and want to know more.

"Police data" is incredibly vague. What types of data are most interest and available from most of every agency?

If the only answer to what kind of data is "police data" then I'm not sure if I should care, support, or contribute.

Is this data on how many toilet paper roles departments purchase or police involved shootings? neither?

Certainly you can see where the question is coming from right?

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josh-pdap 1367 days ago
Your question makes sense. I’ve addressed this elsewhere but I’m currently just answering on my phone so I’ll summarize by saying that our focus is on complete, solid local data one municipality at a time (full context is really helpful when actually using the data) as opposed to any particular type of data.

That said, we still have work to do pointing people in this direction and helping them understand why. This whole thread is going to really affect our website and docs :)

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s1artibartfast 1367 days ago
Thanks for responding! What is complete data? Arrests by time and geolocation? Quarterly stats by call or response?

I have gone through some of the public info for my department so I am curious.

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jasonlotito 1366 days ago
Again, it seems to me that they if police are publishing data, they want to make it accessible.

Are police publishing arrests by time and geolocation? Quarterly stats by call or response? Then yes.

Hell, I'm sure if they are publishing coffee consumption numbers, that would go up as well.

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s1artibartfast 1366 days ago
>Are police publishing arrests by time and geolocation? Quarterly stats by call or response? Then yes.

I obviously don't know, and neither do you.

I don't know why you feel the need to weigh in on my question with unhelpful non-answers.

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