Civic Informer has a lot of data. This post walks through every feature available to Bellingham residents, so you know where to find what you're looking for.
If you're new here, start with Welcome to Civic Informer, Bellingham. For details on the data itself, see What Our Data Is, and What It Isn't.
The Bellingham Dashboard
Your starting point is civicinformer.com/bellingham. The dashboard gives you a snapshot of what's happening in Bellingham right now and over the past several days.
At the top, you'll see a real-time activity score (Quiet, Below Average, Typical, Above Average, or Elevated), today's featured report, and a 7-day overview with incident and arrest counts. Below that, you'll find cards for each of the past several days.
Scroll further for neighborhood rankings and a prompt to subscribe to the daily email briefing.
The Activity Score
The color-coded label at the top of the dashboard is based on the Safety Pulse Score, a value from 0 to 100. It combines incident volume, violent crime share, geographic concentration, and persistent hot spots into a single reading.
"Typical" means the day is tracking near the 30-day average. "Elevated" means multiple metrics are above baseline. For a full breakdown of how it works, read Understanding Your Daily Briefing.
Daily Reports
Every day has its own report page at /bellingham/YYYY/MM/DD. You can navigate between days using the previous/next links, or browse the full report archive.
Each report has nine tabs:
- Overview — total incidents, violent crimes, arrests, top category, top neighborhood, 30-day comparison, and a heatmap
- Categories — full breakdown of all incident categories with counts and 7-day trends
- Violent Crime — violent incident count, top violent offense, arrest rate, neighborhood concentration, and individual violent incident cards
- Arrests — total arrests, unique arrestees, violent arrests, arrest rate, top categories, and a complete arrest table
- Neighborhoods — complete neighborhood rankings, concentration metrics, and location return rates
- Hourly — time-of-day distribution chart with peak hour analysis
- Trends — day-over-day and week-over-week comparisons
- Intel — AI-generated pattern insights drawn from the day's data and recent context
- Log — the complete incident log with every case number, time, offense, category, violent flag, and neighborhood
The daily report is also available as a condensed email newsletter. For a comparison of the two formats, read Understanding Your Daily Briefing.
Weekly and Monthly Summaries
The weekly summary covers 7 days of rolling data with tabs for overview, neighborhoods, categories, day-by-day breakdown, and hourly patterns.
The monthly summary covers 30 days of rolling data with the same tab structure, plus week-by-week progression.
These views are where you can distinguish real trends from single-day noise. If a day looks unusual, check the weekly and monthly views for context.
The Interactive Map
Access it at /bellingham/map. The map shows individual incident markers on an interactive Bellingham map. The default view covers the last 30 days, adjustable up to 90 days.
Map Filters
You can filter by:
- Category: toggle individual incident types on or off (assault, theft, drugs, vandalism, etc.)
- Arrest status: nonviolent, nonviolent + arrest, violent, violent + arrest
- Time of day: Morning (6am-12pm), Afternoon (12pm-6pm), Evening (6pm-12am), Night (12am-6am)
- Neighborhood: toggle specific neighborhoods
- Violence level: violent vs. non-violent
Reading the Map Legend
Colors indicate severity: blue (nonviolent), dark blue (nonviolent + arrest), orange (violent), red (violent + arrest).
Shapes indicate category: shield (assault/violence), square (theft/burglary), diamond (sex offenses/domestic/harassment), triangle (traffic/vandalism), circle (disorder/drugs/behavioral/admin).
Sharing a Map View
Click the Share button to copy a URL with your current filters and date range. Anyone who opens that link sees exactly what you see.
Neighborhoods
The neighborhoods page shows all Bellingham neighborhoods ranked by incident activity. Each neighborhood card shows incident count, violent crime count, 30-day trend, and top categories.
Use this to understand your specific area or compare neighborhoods. Keep in mind that higher counts often reflect commercial density and foot traffic, not necessarily higher risk for residents.
Community Resources
The resources page is a searchable directory of local organizations. You can filter by category: crisis support, mental health, housing, substance use, domestic violence, legal aid, youth services, food, healthcare, and more.
Each listing shows the organization's name, description, phone number (crisis lines prioritized), hours, website, and badges for 24/7 availability and free services.
For a curated guide to the most important services, read Top Bellingham Social Services.
Agency Features You'll See
Civic Informer partners with local agencies. Here's what that looks like for you as a reader.
Alert Banners
When Bellingham Police Department has something timely to share, you'll see a red banner at the top of the page. These might be safety advisories, traffic alerts, community event notices, or department announcements.
Banners come directly from BPD, not from Civic Informer. You can dismiss a banner, and it won't reappear for that particular announcement.
Blog Posts from Bellingham Police Department
Agency partners can publish posts on this blog. These appear in the regular feed and are authored by the department. Look for the author name to tell the difference: "Bellingham Police Department" vs. "Civic Informer."
"From BPD" in Your Newsletter
When agency content is available, the daily email includes a dedicated section with department messaging. This might be a safety tip, event announcement, or public notice. Like banners, this content is authored by BPD, not by us.
Subscribing to Daily Briefings
On any page, click the subscribe button or visit the Bellingham dashboard. Enter your email. You'll receive a morning briefing each day, free, no ads.
Every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. For a walkthrough of what's in each email, read Understanding Your Daily Briefing.
For Organizations
If you work at a nonprofit, government agency, or community group, the data on Civic Informer can support grant applications, neighborhood planning, resource allocation, and community presentations.
Our daily reports, weekly and monthly summaries, and neighborhood rankings provide structured data that's ready to reference. If you'd like to discuss how your organization can use the platform, reach out through the contact page or visit the organizations page.
That covers everything currently available on Civic Informer for Bellingham. We're actively building new features and data integrations. If you have suggestions, questions, or want to report something that doesn't look right, reply to any daily email or use the contact page.