Discover how police data can be safely shared, using automated techniques, for the Police Data Initiative or via any open data portal. In this webinar, you’ll hear lessons learned handling sensitive data from the RCMP in BC and the City of Auburn. Learn tips for integrating disparate data, maintaining victim privacy, performing data validation, and much more.

1. How to Manage Open Police
Data – Tips for Data QA/QC
and Automation
Alice Pence, City of Auburn
Robert Schultz, RCMP in BC
Cat Gracey, Safe Software
Dale Lutz, Safe Software

2. Who are we?
Connect Your Applications | Transform Your Data | Automate Your Workflows

3. Police Data Initiative
53 U.S. jurisdictions. 41 million people. 90 datasets. And growing!
www.publicsafetydataportal.org

4. Why Should Police Data be Shared?
● Increase transparency and build trust
● Help provide improved public services
● Fuel more intelligent policing decisions
The Ethics:
● Need to protect victim identity
● Only share when it’s lawful to do so
● Must be accurate, free of errors

5. Dallas Police Department Experience
(by the numbers)
12

6. Dallas Police Department Experience
(by the numbers)
45

7. Dallas Police Department Experience
(by the numbers)
67

8. Alice Pence
City of Auburn

9. Automating Crime Data
to Import into GIS
Alice Pence
GIS/Database Specialist
City of Auburn, WA

10. Quick Bio
• BS in Geography from University of Idaho w/Certificate in GIS
• In GIS field for 3+ years – been in Auburn, WA for over 1 year
Alice Pence

11. Our Crimes Database
• Stored in a Proprietary Linux system
• Raw data with only addresses
• Can’t directly dump into GIS- needs to have data transformed for public/internal viewing, QA/QC, a
spatial component to view on maps and applications, attributes renamed…

12. First impression…

13. Our Mission
How to view all this
data spatially for
analysis and reporting?
Our first idea…

14. A Python Script
The Good
• It worked. Can add new offenses, change and update as needed.
• Ran in windows scheduler to automate.
The Bad
• Long, cumbersome script.
• Needed multiple databases (.gbd → SDE) to clean and move data.
The Ugly
• Can’t easily change connection to Crimes Database, no direct connection to source (connected
through ArcCatalog -then built through Model Builder- then exported out as a Python Script).
• No custom alerts or in depth logging capabilities.
• Not user friendly for non-python users.

15. An easier
solution?
Our next idea…

16. FME!!

17. First Challenge
Python FME
This continues on
for a few more
pages…
How to rename and group 4 letter offense codes

18. Attribute Mapper
Transformer
• As an example: RKBK
Crime Type= Felony Crimes Against Person
Crime Name= Robbery
1 2
3
*double bonus:
I was able to
automatically import
codes by a CSV file,
AND…FME
automatically read in
all the source values
for me

19. The Rest of the Process

20. Into the GIS
Environment
FME → SDE → MXD → Web Map
Service → Online Application =
Reporting and Analysis

21. Wait- there’s
more…
Automating the
workbench and logging
too!

22. FME Server Set Up
Email notifications when Workbench
succeed or failed

23. Logging Capabilities (FME Jobs)

24. Main point: FME rocks

25. Comparison
Python
• Cumbersome/long script
• Not very easy to
customize alerts or logs
• Hard to edit- other users
might not know the
python language
• No friendly user interface
FME
• Easy to update codes and
field changes
• Other users can easily edit-
even w/minimal knowledge of
FME
• Share directly to FME Server
for logs and alerts
• Friendly user interface for
FME Server and easy to set up

26. Our Next Great
Idea…
Socrata Open Data
Portal

27. Open Data Portal: Crimes Dataset
Updated nightly with new data, thanks to
FME Desktop and FME Server

28. FME Workbench

29. API Download and
Export Tools
Custom Data Lenses
(aka Graphs and
Maps

30. Thank you!
Alice Pence
GIS/Database Specialist
City of Auburn, WA
apence@auburnwa.gov
Links to sites discussed in slides:
Socrata Open Data Portal: https://data.auburnwa.gov/
Auburn Crimes Map:
https://maps.auburnwa.gov/html5viewer/Index.html?
viewer=crimes

31. Q&AChat your questions into the GoToWebinar control panel

32. Robert Schultz
RCMP

33. Property Crime

34. Spatially Anonymized Property Crime

35. Property Crime – High Density

36. Property Crime – Low Density

37. Open Data in San Francisco
The new ETL job platform.

38. Background.
● City’s official open data portal is SF OpenData.
The Vision.
● Empower use of City data.
“Our vision is that the City’s data is understood, documented, and high quality.”

39. The Project: Increase number and timeliness of datasets
● Few workspace authors
● Safe place to try out workspaces
The Results.
● Improved ETL job platform, design and architecture
● 100-500 ETL jobs
● Simple ETL Jobs
● Use best-practices
View the original presentation
by Samuel Valdez and
Janine Heiser
(Presented at the FME World Tour 2016)

40. Open Data in NYC
GIS for public use.

41. Background.
● The Citywide Street Centerline Database (CSCL) is the authoritative source
for location data used by New York City's public safety agencies (NYPD,
FDNY) for 911 call-taking and dispatch.
The Vision.
Make CSCL data easily accessible for the day-to-day GIS
user.
View the original presentation
by Chris Rado
(Presented at the FME World Tour 2016)

42. The Results.
New version of CSCL created that is better suited for general GIS tasks
and made it available to all city agencies, to the public via
NYC Open Data and to Batman.

43. Q&AChat your questions into the GoToWebinar control panel

44. Thank you!
Live chat us at www.safe.com
Free Resources:
FME Desktop Training (June 7-8)
FME Server Training (June 14-15)
Blog post: Guide to Open Data:
Using it, Sharing it, and Creating a
Portal
Open Data Webinar
Open Data eBook