‘It’s important to our department to be transparent’: Bend Police launch public ‘Data Hub’

(Update: Adding video, comments from Bend Police)

'There's just tons of data people can dig into, if they're curious.'

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Ever wonder what crimes happen daily in Bend, or what the latest stats or trends show for the city or your neighborhood? The Bend Police Department has launched a new way for the public to easily access that data.

The information in the Bend Police Data Hub comes from calls made to police through Deschutes County 911. 

You can access the data hub at https://policedata.bendoregon.gov.

The data hub, created in conjunction with the city’s Office of Performance Management, seeks to provide more transparency and to make it easier for our community members to learn about the types of calls for service and reported crimes that take place in the city, officials said.

 "We bring the data down to the city's environment each night, and so that we're able to display our maps and our dashboards based on data up to 6 p.m. the previous night," Colleen Miller of the city's Office of Performance Management said Friday.

Police Chief Mike Krantz gave city councilors a look at the new data website at their Wednesday evening meeting, noting that he's marking three years in the position and has been seeking since his arrival to provide this kind of data to the public. He also noted that a similar but more complete internal database for police use was completed at the start of the year.

"Bend Police have long used data- and evidence-led approaches to understand and improve daily operations and services for our community," the city announcement said. "Now, the public can examine trends and learn more about individual crimes and calls for service through reports, maps and raw data tables."

Bend Police Communications Manager Sheila Miller said, "There's just tons of data people can dig into, if they're curious."

The data will be updated on a daily basis. It is compiled from the Computer Aided Dispatch and Records Management System that is maintained by Deschutes County 911 Dispatch.

The information has been anonymized so that individual addresses are not identified -- only a block is shown. In addition, certain types of crimes, such as domestic abuse and rape, are not featured in the maps. However, they are still accounted for in the data tables.

The public can access datasets, maps and dashboards with information about calls for service, case offenses, mental health calls and bias crimes.

Miller said, "Folks can also see the the number of crimes taking place in certain neighborhoods, so they can to do some comparison from neighborhood to neighborhood as well. So they may be interested to see what has happened near them. They could do that information on a map."

"A lot of that information has personal information in it or locations, addresses, that sort of thing that can't be shared," she added. "And so the Office of Performance Management is this awesome group of people that create the information and make it palatable basically to the public."

In addition, there is a map that identifies where police unmanned aircraft systems (drones) are flying throughout the city.

Among the information available are the number of calls for service by year, the call volume by day of the week and time of day, and the call types that officers are responding to.

Krantz said, “It’s important to our department to be transparent with the public about the types of crime our officers respond to, and the amount of calls we’re handling on a daily basis. We hope that this new tool will provide our community a new way to understand what is going on in the City of Bend and stay informed about crime in our city.”

City councilors will get a more in-depth briefing on the bias and hate crimes data at their Sept. 16 meeting.

City Councilor Barb Campbell praised the extensive information provided to the public at Wednesday's meeting, calling it “tremendous,” She also asked if similar data is or will be provided detailing officers’ use-of-force incidents. Krantz said that’s not yet available, as internal software upgrades will be needed first.