Category: Information

Chicago Police responds to my FOIA request about bicycle theft

March 15, 2011 / / 0 Comments

A Chicago Police (CPD) officer called me this morning to discuss my FOIA request for bike theft data. It was very revealing.

The first problem is that I forgot to ask for a time frame. No big deal, I can tell him over the phone that I want the last three full calendar years.

The second problem is that there’s not a separate code for recording bicycle thefts. It’s recorded under “Simple Theft” and as being under $300 or over $300.

Third problem is that the database front end (the graphical interface that allows officers to search the reporting database) doesn’t allow him to search all of the report narratives for “bike” or “bicycle” and limit the search to “Simple Theft” in a specific time frame. Some report codes allow narrative searching, and some don’t. He said it would be impractical to search all narratives for the words “bike” or “bicycle” because a lot of reports not about theft would appear in the results.

In my last blog on the Chicago Police Department’s FOIA response (for my request about bike crashes), they explained that they don’t have to create records that don’t already exist (like a list of bike thefts). This response is identical, but they called and gave me a better explanation. The officer also said they don’t have the staff resources to spend on collating their records for bicycle theft reports. I understand this.

He also explained that reporting standards at the CPD are guided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the department’s “Incident Reporting Standards.” In the FBI’s reporting standards, there exists a line item for “bicycle theft” but it’s the same code as “simple theft.” There are separate codes for “credit card theft” and “motor vehicle theft.”

It seems the solution to the problem of obtaining records on bike theft in Chicago is to update the Incident Reporting Standards and include a new code for bike theft reports. At the end of the call, I understood that I was not going to get a list of bike theft dates and times from the police.

For now, Chicagoans should also report their bicycle theft to the Stolen Bike Registry so there’s a publicly available record of theft locations.

A Chicagoans rides his bike north on Halsted Street through University Village. If his bike is stolen, we can’t expect the Chicago Police Department to keep an easily findable report of it.

Better bike crash map now available for Chicago

March 14, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I met Derek at a get together for “urban geeks” last Tuesday where he told me he was making a filterable/searchable version of my Chicago bike crash map using the Google Fusion Tables API. It essentially allows you to perform SQL-like queries to show different results on the map than one view. It’s possible to do this yourself if you open the bike crash map in the full Google Fusion Tables interface (do that now).

You can use it now!

New bike crash map, click through to view

Derek’s map has the benefit of great interface to drill down to the data you want. You can select a day, a surface condition, and the injury type. To download the data yourself, you’ll still have to access the full Fusion Tables interface.

Door lane photo and graphic by Gary Kavanagh in Santa Monica, California.

And since the data is the same as my original map, crash reports involving motor vehicle doors are not included. Here’s why doorings are excluded.

Why the Chicago bike crash map doesn’t show doorings

March 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

The data on the Chicago bike crash map comes from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) after reports are made to the Chicago Police Department, but it’s missing certain types of crashes. IDOT currently will not collect data about doorings.

Some Chicago cyclists created this sticker to alert drivers and their passengers to the dangers of the door. “Someone opened a door and killed my friend.” This is version 1 of the sticker; see version 2. Photo by Quinn Dombrowski.

Here’s a summary of the process:

1. Police officers make the reports

Chicago police officers collect information on dooring (outlawed by MCC 9-80-035) because of a recent agreement with the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) – the importance of reporting doorings became a bigger priority after someone died after being doored on LaSalle Street in 2008.

When there is a dooring, Chicago police officers use an “Additional Units Form” in addition to SR-1050 (standard reporting form for Illinois motor vehicle crashes) and write “dooring” where the IDOT barcode would be on the Additional Units Form.

2. How the Chicago Police Department records it

When the Chicago Police Records Office sees that there’s no barcode they know they can’t send it to IDOT, but they see “dooring” and scan it for their own records (so they can provide it to crash parties later) and then email that number to the CDOT Bicycle Program. (There was a general order put out by CPD on this procedure and, yes, they actually send them– at least some of them.)

The CPD also knows that doorings, according to IDOT, are not a “reportable” crash. In addition to doorings, IDOT doesn’t consider the following as “reportable” crashes:

  • Any crash in which the first point of impact does not involve a moving motor vehicle.
  • Any non-injury crash which causes less than $1500 in property damage, unless one or more of the drivers was uninsured.

3. CDOT and Chicago Police Department connect

CDOT can then connect to the Police Departments records system, download a scan of the crash report, reads it and enters specifics into a tracking spreadsheet.

This is how dooring data is collected in Chicago because IDOT will throw away reports or attachments without barcodes. This should change. This process affects ALL cities in the State of Illinois but as far as I’m aware, only Chicago records doorings. It’s unfortunate that local agencies are forced to bear this additional task and provide special training for thousands of officers outside of statewide practices because IDOT doesn’t acknowledge the importance of this issue and revise its reporting policy.

Below is the SR-1050 form and you can see the IDOT barcode with the case number below it. The bike and pedestrian crash data I have from IDOT includes those case numbers.

Read more about doorings on Grid Chicago.

Reminder about open data and Obama’s Open Government Directive

March 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Quickly after taking office, President Obama issued a memorandum about open government and opening government data. Then came the Open Government Directive* which said:

To the extent practicable and subject to valid restrictions, agencies should publish information online in an open format that can be retrieved, downloaded, indexed, and searched by commonly used web search applications. An open format is one that is platform independent, machine readable, and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information.

Essentially, the executive government (er, Obama Administration) adopts the presumption of openness, that distributing public data is the default position and action to take.

Don’t squat on the data. Don’t fret over how people will view or manipulate the data – this is not your concern. Don’t delay its release. If you do this, you are a frigid dataist and I will remember this.

Photo of visual note taking at an open data seminar by Karen Quinn.

*The Directive has a little more backbone than the original memorandum: “This memorandum requires executive departments and agencies to take the following steps toward the goal of creating a more open government.”

Thank you to Tech President.

More data goodness for Chicago: TIFs, vacant and abandoned buildings

March 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Derek Eder emailed me to tell me about two web applications he created based on Google Fusion Tables and its API (application programming interface, basically a question and answer program for designers and programmers to interact with).

He created searchable/filterable maps for TIF districts (tax increment financing, the Chicago mayor’s pet project bank account) and vacant and abandoned buildings. Both use data straight from the City of Chicago.

Screenshot of the Derek Eder’s TIF district web application.

Essentially, the web applications work like this (in case you want to build one yourself):

  • Load the data into Google Fusion Tables (this is very easy)
  • Build a custom interface on your own website (not so easy)
  • Hook into the Fusion Tables API to load the data into your custom interface

As for me, I might look into building a custom interface on my website, but right now I’m going to create a pedestrian crash map for Chicago using Polymaps, a Javascript library. I specifically want to use the k-Means Clustering to show crash hotspots. We already know where they are based on a 2007 report from the University of North Carolina – see that map here.

These markings are intended to reduce the number of pedestrian crashes by increasing the walking person’s visibility.