Friday, July 28, 2017

Montgomery County crime data blackout enters 9th day

"Crime" vanishes from the Google
results for "Montgomery County
Open Data"
Montgomery County continues to violate its own open data law by excluding crime incident data from its Data Montgomery website for a ninth consecutive day. The latest development is that "Crime" as a sub-result in Google search no longer appears when you search "Montgomery County open data."

I have contacted the County Department of Technology Services, but have not received a response as of press time.

As we wait for the County to comply with its own data law, consider these bullet points from the County's Open Data Policy:

"Complete - All public data is made available. Public data is data that is not subject to valid privacy, security, or privilege limitations.

Timely - Data is made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.

Non-discriminatory - Data is available to anyone, with no requirement of registration."

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Until you know otherwise, it is a glitch.
Not a nefarious crime.

In 9 days you made a phone call. Wow.
Meanwhile, aside from piquing my curiosity and looking it up for you, reporting on other threads what I found, and carefully crafting a post which was rudely deleted for who knows why, I have found answers. I'm happy to report it's not nefarious.

Good luck with your investigation.

Anonymous said...

Good grief... it is available. And has been for awhile. Common sense led me to the following:
1) Go to: https://data.montgomerycountymd.gov/
2) Select Public Safety (Data on MoCo Polic, Fire and Rescue, and Corrections and Rehabilitation)
3)See data

Anonymous said...

Looks Like MoCo Is Gonna Get Another Fortune 500 HQ!

Anonymous said...

10:45AM - No, there's a specific dataset that isn't showing up. I used to use it for drilling down to neighborhoods. Much of the info is there in other sets, but not all of it. But, like I mentioned earlier, it's still listed in their handbook, and still in the YouTube instructions, but it's not in the data lists anymore.

Anonymous said...

11:54AM - Ack! Nope, nope, nope....
10:52 is me, 10:44. That's why it piqued for me. I used to use it. I'd get there from here: https://www.policedatainitiative.org/

My original post (10:44 is what I could remember of it) was part of the mass extinction.

Anonymous said...

World Trade Center Transportation Hub, in Manhattan, under construction in August 2015.

Note that the sidewalk is completely closed on the left side of the street, and one traffic lane is blocked. Lower in the picture, the street is completely closed to traffic and both sidewalks are closed, but one lane of the roadway is open to pedestrian traffic.

Anonymous said...

Hey Dyer, why don't you think that a presidential candidate from MoCo isn't newsworthy?

Robert Dyer said...

7:54: Maybe because John Delaney is delusional that he could win the Democratic primary, when he has the stain of "vicious" Aeon Financial on his hands, has zero name recognition nationally, and is out of step with where the current energy of his party is?

6:46: Try to find an example that isn't a special case terror target.

10:47: Fake news. A merger/buyout isn't "getting" anything, and they haven't even chosen a bidder yet.

10:45: Good grief, indeed - you are dead wrong. As 10:52 correctly pointed out, the data you're referring to are not the crime incident reports taken from 911 dispatch. They are smaller datasets of things like arrests, traffic tickets, etc.

Anonymous said...

10:52 again.
This is what I used to use. The Montgomery County link goes to the same useless login page that Dyer gets.
https://www.policedatainitiative.org/datasets/incidents/

If you open one of the other place's incident data, you'll get an idea of what the MC page had.

Anonymous said...

Quite the journalist Dyer. You now decide when a candidate is viable or not? The guy made it through the primary and won the general election for his House seat, in a gerrymandered district. The closer we get to elections the more pathetic and transparent your motives become.

Anonymous said...

Looks like BB managed to report three breaking crime stories yesterday, in spite of the MoCo Cartel Blackout.

Robert Dyer said...

7:08: Only one of those wasn't in a police press release, but you touch on one of the possible motivations to conceal the crime data: to ensure that there will be favorable media spin on crime stories.

I heard the sirens responding to the stabbing Saturday night. Yet, conveniently, not only is there no crime data, but all public safety radio channels were offline all weekend, unavailable to hear via scanner. So I was completely blacked out, while that information could later be arbitrarily relayed by executive branch employees to favored media outlets that might not ask too many questions, or note current crime trends.

Is the recent gang-related spike in the crime the reason why crime information is now being suppressed and censored? That's what I'm trying to find out in my current investigation.