The St. Louis police department late Friday afternoon released detailed, incident-level crime data for the past three years after widespread criticism about the agency’s lack of transparency with the numbers, the St. Louis Today reports. Spokesman Sgt. Charles Wall said in an announcement that the department took a closer look at the issue and discovered it had produced similar data for another group. q“These files contain open record information,” Wall said in the release, “and we will be making these files available on our public website today.”
The move comes after the Post-Dispatch reported last week that city police had three years ago turned off the spigot on the public release of detailed geographic crime data. Moreover, the department insisted it was no longer able to publish the data — despite the fact that it had provided such information to insiders, the newspaper found.
The loss left community groups, researchers, and the public without data key to understanding crime trends in the city. “What’s frustrating is that the data exists,” Ness Sandoval, a professor of sociology and demography at St. Louis University, told the Post-Dispatch then. “This data belongs to the public. It’s a public good.” But Friday, Sandoval lauded the data’s release. “I think it’s a victory for the residents of the city that they have this data,” he said. “We are now in a position to share this information with residents so they can have a discussion with their local politicians and their leaders of how to make their neighborhoods safer.”