Boston Police Move Data Out Faster
The Boston police commissioner Kathy O'Toole wants to be a leader in pushing crime data to the public. But she might find she has a lot of work to do. One of the more striking things you'll find about law enforcement is that it doesn't respond well to public requests for police records. In studies rating how well the police respond to requests for documents from the public, the police consistently rank lower than many other state agencies. So it came as no surprise when the Boston Herald found mixed results when two interns posed as average citizens and requested police logs from Boston area precincts. The performance was mixed. Some precincts turned over the logs without question, as the law requires. Others reacted suspiciously, asking questions of the requesters. Under the law, the logs are public documents. The failure to follow the law in some cases is probably due to a failure to understand the law compounded by some inherent suspicion of unusual requests. So the Herald published its findings in a special report with an additional story critical of the police department. Weeks later, the Boston Globe follows up with a story outlining the challenges the city faces in getting crime reports to the public in real time. Turns out in recent weeks the police department has committed to speeding up its plan to post crime data online so the public before it outgrows its usefulness. [GET MORE SPECIFIC HERE]