About 8 months ago, I posted this ( the story of how a post I wrote about utilizing county level police data to "police the police."The idea quickly evolved into a real goal, to make good on the promise of free and open policing data. By freeing policing data from antiquated and difficult to access county data systems, and compiling that data in a rigorous way, we could create a valuable new tool to level the playing field and help provide community oversight of police behavior and activity.In the 9 months since the first post, something amazing has happened.
The idea turned into something real. The Police Data Accessibility Project ( core group of highly committed and passionate folks have completed the necessary organizational steps enable us to realistically accomplish the monumental data collection task ahead of us.Let me tell you a bit about what the team has accomplished in these 9 months.- Established the community and identified volunteer leaders who were willing and able to assume consistent responsibility.- Gained a pro-bono law firm to assist us in navigating the legal waters. Arnold + Porter is our pro-bono law firm.
Arnold + Porter helped us to establish as a legal entity and apply for 501c3 status- We've carefully defined our goals and set a clear roadmap for the future (Slides 7-14 in the deck linked on the site)So now, I'm asking for help, because scraping, cleaning, and validating 18,000 police departments is no easy task.The first is to join us and help the team. Those with scraping experience are especially needed.The second is to either donate, or help us spread the message by sharing this post, liking it, or tweeting about it.Police data accessibility is possible, and we are going to make it happen.. Thank you all so much