Local Newspaper Wins Fight to Get the NYPD To Share Data

The Crime Report Blog published a fascinating story about a local Bronx news paper's fight to secure the release of complete and usable crime data for the north Bronx community it serves. The Norwood News initially received data from the NYPD about local crime trends that was much more detailed than the published data on the NYPD's website about the 52nd Precinct  That cooperation ended once the paper published the data which showed that  while crime was down overall,  certain areas of the precinct had higher rates of crime in certain categories. The story touches on an important issue: local communities need good data if they are going to develop responses to local crime problems and hold government agencies accountable for results.  Government agencies are starting to make data available in user friendly formats to the public. One example highlighted in the article is the NYC 311 system.