[open-government] Fwd: [COG] $1 Million earmark for CrimeReports.com = less real public data access

[Steven Clift]

This is BAD news for opening up broad access to crime data - the
number one everyday citizen demanded government information based my
direct experience with online community forums. Note some useful
links: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Minneapolis_and_St._Paul_crime_data

"CrimeReports is contending in a current federal case that public crime
data becomes CrimeReports' own proprietary product in the form
provided on CrimeReports.com."

The bill should be amended to fund an effort modeled on the
standardization of transit scheduling/routing data -
http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com - so that all police departments can
put out real-time feeds of various crime data (heck, Seattle even does
911 calls now - http://schrier.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/citywatch/ )
for broad reuse.

Like weather data provided by the federal government, it gets to the
people through many, often competing providers.

Read on below.

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
  Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
  Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
  New Tel: +1.612.234.7072


From: Dan Knauss <dan at newlocalmedia.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 3:35 PM
Subject: [COG] $1 Million earmark for CrimeReports.com = less real
public data access
To: Citizens For OpenGov <citizens-for-opengov at googlegroups.com>


In the FY 2011 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies
Appropriations Requests, there is a $1 Million request for the Major
Cities Chiefs of Police Association which would be used to purchase
services from CrimeReports.com.
http://bennett.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=CommerceRequests

CrimeReports.com is a private company that makes contracts with
municipal police forces to provide their crime data to the public on
the CrimeReports.com website--but according to the PDs' specifiations.
In the process, the public information that the source crime data is
may seem to become more accessible, but this is not the case.

CrimeReports is contending in a current federal case that public crime
data becomes CrimeReports' own proprietary product in the form
provided on CrimeReports.com. (See links below and The Citizen Media
Law Project's article, "Public Engines to World: Look, But Don't Touch
the Crime Data"
http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2010/public-engines-world-look-dont-touch-crime-data)

In this view it would be technically illegal for someone to duplicate
or republish material from CrimeReports.com by other means, which many
PDs may use as their sole or primary means of providing public access
to crime data. (It is not access to data, it is access to a limited
representation of some data.) This is not only bad for public and
media oversight, it is bad for technologists who wish to tap public
data for research and applications.

>From the appropriations document:

Project: The National Crime Map Expansion
Amount: $1,000,000
Purpose: The National Crime Map currently includes more than 800 law
enforcement agencies across the country; its aim to make incident
level crime data available to the general public at the neighborhood
level within 24 hours of occurrence.
Location: Draper, Utah
Recipient of Funds: Major Cities Chiefs of Police Association
Explanation/Justification: Very few members of the public have ready
access to street level crime information on a timely basis. This
funding will allow any law enforcement agency in the United States to
connect to the existing National Crime Map, CrimeReports.com.
Currently, more than 800 agencies have already joined at an average
total cost of $110 per month. Through this funding, CrimeReports.com
will be able to expand the map and drop the cost of integrating and
deploying the system to roughly $20/month per agency, regardless of
size, population served, or members of the community served. In
contrast, cities that build their own portals spend $50,000 - $100,000
per agency to implement local crime maps.


Further reading:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100614/0208019805.shtml
http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/public-engines-inc-v-reportsee-inc