July 15, 2004

Police department’s new high-tech Web site encourages community policing

By Kymberli W. Brady
Staff Writer 

On July 7, the San Jose Police Department launched a newly renovated Web site offering the city’s nearly 925,000 residents access to comprehensive information tracking crime in their neighborhoods. The Web site is part of a promise to steep the department in high-tech innovation that Chief Rob Davis made when he took the department’s helm in January. 

Citing San Jose and the Silicon Valley as technology leaders, Davis says the problem never had to do with capability. “If we have the ability, we should provide this information to our residents,” he explains. “Until now, we had the know-how. We had the skills. Basically we just needed to have the will to give this to the public, and we’ve done that now.” 

The need, according to Davis, centers upon the concept of community policing by providing residents bird’s-eye views of what is actually happening in their own neighborhoods.

“We always talk about crime in terms of overall city crime,” he explains. “We’re a city of over 176,000 miles—do they have the ability to say that they know what’s happening in their area, and can they play a role in combating crime? This is how you tap into one of the 357 geographical areas in the city and see what’s happening right there.” 

In Davis’ Almaden neighborhood, for example, most calls reference either speeding or auto burglary. “That tells me that I need to pay attention to speeding in my area,” he says. “And rather than working on other problems, I should be looking for people hanging around cars. It empowers me to do something about the crime in my area.” 

San Jose is now one of only four law enforcement agencies in the nation to use Public CADmine, a state-of-the-art computer-aided dispatch application that offers access to CAD-based 911 calls, or “calls-for-service” to the community via their computers. 

“A lot of police departments are uncomfortable with how the people will interpret the information,” Davis says. “However, I think we need to provide it so they will become more educated on their specific neighborhood and come up with ways to improve their community.” 

Undoubtedly, the most impressive component to the revamped site, Calls-for-Service data, can be found within the “My Neighborhood” link at the top of the homepage. There, users are taken to a comprehensible map that divides San Jose into the police department’s 357 “beat blocks” (neighborhood areas]. By simply entering a specific address or intersection into the database or clicking on an area within the color-coded map, individuals can track the number of emergency incident and crime calls placed in their neighborhoods. 

Call type reports and profiles are accessible for both area-specific and agency-wide formats, with data compiled from the past week to as far back as 12 months. But, because the date, time, type and location of every call made is included in the system database, the department is quick to emphasize that the numbers may include multiple calls for a single incident and may or may not result in an arrest or crime report. 

What won’t be available are specific details of individual crime reports, including the origins 911 calls and exact locations of the incidents, as the mapping technology only enables viewers to see that an incident occurred within one of the department’s beat blocks. 

Of the nine beat blocks that encompass the Almaden Valley, data shows that 75 calls for service were placed during the week of June 27 to July 3, including three burglaries, three for hit and run, 34 disturbances, four vehicle thefts and four shots fired. In addition to providing valuable insight into types of calls placed in specific areas, the numbers also reaffirm the low crime rate that places Almaden residents among the safest in the city—especially when compared to the much smaller downtown neighborhood that Mayor Ron Gonzales calls home—where 388 calls for service were logged during the same time period. 

Almaden Division Commander Capt. Jack Farmer admits that offering access to the department by e-mail as well as phone has been helpful. Over the past week, he has received numerous calls and e-mails from residents who either have questions about or comments on the new site.

“It shows that they are using it and paying attention,” he says. “The feedback I’ve gotten from them is that it is very useful and they’re very thankful—they really appreciate what Chief Davis has done. This is a great tool and it most certainly is increasing communications on a different level.” 

Along with monthly messages from Chief Davis offered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, additional features now include the option to sign up for neighborhood and city crime alerts via e-mail as well as the flexibility of filing online police reports for vandalism, vehicle tampering, lost property, theft, vehicle burglary and harassing phone calls. 

Barely more than a week old, the site has already received over 17,000 hits. It is being hailed by national organizations, such as the Office of Law Enforcement Technology and Commercialization in West Virginia, as a glowing model for using technological advances to provide the tools necessary to empower and encourage residents to become proactive in community policing strategies. 

By providing current press releases, safety tips and real-time traffic updates, along with fugitive and missing persons photos, Amber alerts, a high-risk sex offender search and assistance on how to work with police to prevent and solve crimes, the site is intended to serve as a valuable community policing tool—one that Davis hopes will enable San Jose to retain the title of Safest Big City in America for years to come. 

“We’re just scratching the surface,” he admits. “As time goes by, we’ll need to explore other things—make it more interactive and see what we can do to make it more of a community resource by offering a more real-time sketch, so people will go to it daily. Information can be powerful, and with it we can empower neighborhoods.” 

To view the new San Jose Police Department Web site, log on to www.sjpd.org.