This post covers why the City of Arlington and the Arlington Police Department partnered with Civic Informer, and what it means for the people who live and work here. To learn how to use Civic Informer Arlington, read the launch post.
Something the community has asked for
Residents want an easier way to see what police activity looks like across the city. Something they can check for themselves, any time a question comes up.
Residents have been asking for this for years, and so has the City Council. What we were missing wasn't the information. It was a way to put it in front of people that they would actually use.
Putting the numbers to work
The Arlington Police Department reports on activity in the community all the time: at council meetings, at community gatherings, on social media. But numbers on their own only go so far. "When I talk to the community about what's happening in Arlington, I give people the numbers, but numbers on their own don't mean much," Chief Ventura said. "This gives them the picture behind the numbers, and a place to go check it themselves. They don't have to take my word for it. They can go look every single day." That is what Arlington Civic Informer is built to do. Every morning, the previous day's department activity is published in an online report and a daily email. At the same time, community views like the interactive map and neighborhood pages are updated with the latest numbers.
How information is published
Reports are created from publicly releasable data shared by the Arlington Police Department. Civic Informer generalizes addresses to the block-level, treats sensitive incident types (e.g. domestic violence) with additional protections, and does not publish personally identifiable information . Each day's report is programmatically generated directly from records rather than written by hand, so information is published without personal opinion. "We did the work up front so that what publishes is vetted and consistent," Chief Ventura said. "It goes out every morning whether or not we touch it, and when we have something to add, we add it."
Why Civic Informer
Civic Informer is an independent civic technology platform based in the Pacific Northwest that works with public safety agencies to turn raw records into digestible information for communities. Civic Informer only uses only official government records, does not editorialize, and is free for residents. Commander Barrett has watched other agencies try to build their own;
Bigger agencies have tried to build this themselves, and it takes a lot of people to keep up. This strikes a good balance between how much information is out there and how easy it is to get, and it runs without us having to staff it. We're all stretched thin, so that matters. This is easy to reach and easy to read, and we can bring it to people where they already are.