Sheriff’s officials announced Friday that they’ve restored daily crime reports, which are available once again.
“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) is pleased to announce that the preliminary daily data feeds to CrimeMapping.com and to the Part I and II Crimes download feature have been reactivated and are once again available to the public,” according to a statement released by the Sheriff’s Information Bureau.
A daily crime map for all the active incidents reported through CrimeMapping.com is available through The Signal’s Crime Center at SignalSCV.com/crime.
The goal of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) in temporarily suspending the daily raw data feed of preliminary crime statistics was to assess the overall methods and consistency of the information being provided to the public on multiple digital web-based platforms, officials said Friday.
“Through the review, we sought to determine if our systems were capable of providing daily verified official crime data, consistent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniformed Crime Report (UCR) program, or ascertain if a clearer disclaimer was necessary before end-user access to the raw data,” Harris said in a statement, “in order to alleviate confusion when the provided data is preliminary and subject to update or revision.”
The department determined its current data collection and dissemination platforms now only allow for vetted official data, provided under the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniformed Crime Report (UCR) program, to be posted once per month, as it must be manually verified, but the LASD has determined that it will reinstate the daily preliminary feed with a detailed disclaimer.
The LASD understands the importance of the daily raw digital data feed for use by members of the communities we serve, media, researchers, educators and the public at large in reporting on crime and planning crime-prevention efforts.
Effective immediately, the daily raw preliminary digital data feed has been reinstated to CrimeMapping.com, LASD.org and other digital platforms or downloads. Users should be aware of the below disclaimer pertaining to the preliminary crime statistics reporting.
A link to the latest LASD official crime data will be updated monthly, as reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniformed Crime Report (UCR) program. That link will also be provided with each disclaimer and can be found on the page link above.
“We appreciate the public’s understanding as we worked through this assessment period,” the LASD statement concluded. “The LASD will continue our work to improve our crime data dissemination platforms and maintain the research and crime prevention interests of all those we serve.