Police departments around the region are increasingly offering updates on crime data, but depending on how big the department is, the speed of those updates might vary. Bigger departments can update every day. Others might update every few days, or even on a weekly basis.
But to track it all, you usually have to go to each individual department’s webpage and search around for the information you want, if you’re trying to compare one area to another. That will no longer be the case.
The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has unveiled a new dashboard that lets you track crime around the region, from the District to the biggest suburban counties in Maryland to the smaller municipalities that also work with COG. You can break it down by jurisdiction or group the D.C. area together.
“The dashboard will enable our jurisdictions to continue to focus on reducing crime and mitigating … public misperceptions regarding crime,” Laurel Police Chief Russ Hamill said.
Eli Russ, who is COG’s senior public safety planner, described it as a tool that can “serve as a quick pulse check on tracking crime trends from a regional perspective.”
“Everything is so interconnected in this region, and crime is definitely included in that,” Russ said.
“The guys committing the crimes … they do pay attention to the borders because they know the information is not being shared,” Hamill said. “They knew they could jump, and we might be days behind or weeks behind in contacting each other about crime trends.”
The data in some cases goes back more than two decades, but you can also narrow it down to a two-week period to ascertain if a sudden spike is occurring.
On a year-to-date basis, Russ said crime around the region is down by about 13% overall this year. As of late April, murders around the region were down over 30%, though Russ said he expects that number to change based on what’s occurred in recent weeks.
Hamill acknowledged that the data being posted by COG may not match the perceptions residents have, though he’s hoping it influences that.
“Every police chief will tell you they’ll get messages — ’30 cars got broken into my neighborhood last night.’ Then you check and you’re like, ‘Well, three cars got broken into,'” Hamill said.
“Everybody says, ‘Well, my neighbor’s car, my brother’s car, my sister’s car.’ It all turns out to be the same car, because different relationships exist. So this helps control that narrative and bring, I think in my mind, a sense of calm to people,” he added.
The new dashboard, which can be accessed by the public, goes live Wednesday.
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