advancing the police data initiative

Advancing the Police Data InitiativePeter Moore

About Me

Data Analyst at Socrata

Peter Moore

“Data! Data! Data!” he cried impatiently. “I can't make bricks without clay.”

The Police Data Initiative

Task Force on 21st Century Policing

The Police Data Initiative2014 White House Initiative:

Open Data and Policing (External)Use open data to increase transparency, build community trust, and support innovation.

• Departments share disaggregated data about police-citizen interactions with the public in machine-readable formats

• Identify and disseminate best practices through a community of practice

Internal Accountability (Internal)Better use data and technology to improve early warning systems, internal accountability, and decrease inappropriate uses of force

• Departments work alongside, and share data (primarily through data-sharing agreements) with, researchers and data scientists for analysis

• Develop, share, and adopt best practices around IT system procurement, and internal accountability systems

Map of Police Data Initiative Partners source: Police Foundation

The Challenge:Collect and automatically update police

data into a combined Open Data portal

Police Foundation – Socrata Partnership

Police Foundation• Policing policy

research and services• Subject matter

experts• A lead organization in

the police data initiative

• Open Data Solution• Technical help and

consulting• Data integration

Socrata

Open Data

• NOT data published in PDFs or locked behind online maps or other data visualizations

• NOT data only about crimes, but rather data about the activity of policing, and interactions with citizens

Source: Police Foundation

Getting the Data

Or, how useful the python creator is.

Python

Steps:1. Create the Socrata APIQuery to pull a maximum of50,000 rows that were updated 2 days ago.2. Pull the csv3. Output the individual rows

Our (sample) Workflow

Automation: Enter FME Server

Data Movement!

Lessons Learned• Not so uniform data• Open Data is just the start• PythonCreator (and caller) don’t

automatically create attribute names• FME Server is very useful for

scheduling jobs

Next Steps

Greater integration with source systems (e.g. IAPRO)

Greater awareness

More standardization

Thank you!Peter Moorepeter.moore@socrata.com

Get the data:http://publicsafetydataportal.org/https://data.policefoundation.org/browse& Check with your local Police Department

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