We believe public information should serve a public good.
Civic Informer turns official public safety records into daily reports, live maps, and neighborhood statistics that any resident can read.
An independent civic platform
Civic Informer is an independent civic technology platform based in the Pacific Northwest. We build tools that help communities access, understand, and act on public data, starting with the police and fire records their own governments already publish.
We are not affiliated with any government agency, political party, or law enforcement organization. We do not investigate, editorialize, or take policy positions. We are mission-driven and accountable to the communities we serve.
What we stand for
- Transparency — Every number is traceable to an official record, and the methodology behind it is published in full.
- Accuracy — Statistics are computed by documented methods from source records. The official record is always the final word.
- Accessibility — Complex public data is translated into plain language that any resident can read.
- Community — We are accountable to the communities we serve, not to advertisers or political interests.
How the reporting is made
Everything starts from official government records: the police and fire departments’ own data, ingested directly from public feeds or, in partner cities, under signed data sharing agreements with the agency. No third-party aggregators, no social media, no tips.
Every statistic is computed by a documented method, every offense is categorized by a published crosswalk, and every sentence in a daily report is produced by fixed templates from the data itself. We never speculate or characterize individuals, and the live map generalizes every event to its block, never an exact address.
The complete, plain-English reference is public: any resident, journalist, or researcher can verify how a specific number was made in the methodology.
Live cities and their sources
Each city page documents its own sources and access model in full. The short version:
- Bellingham, WA — Bellingham Police Department and Bellingham Fire Department · signed data sharing agreement
- San Francisco, CA — San Francisco Police Department and San Francisco Fire Department · official public data feed
Coming soon — Spokane, WA; Seattle, WA; Everett, WA; Redmond, WA; Renton, WA; Arlington, WA; Arlington, WA; Monmouth, OR.