The Seattle Police Department just launched on online map of police reports, available for anyone to see.
The Police Reports Map will show mapped crime icons based on initial police reports taken by officers when responding to incidents around the city. After the information enters the Department’s Records Management System it populates this map.
Links directly to the related police reports from the map icons will also become available. As with the existing Police Reports application announced earlier, care is taken to redact victim and other sensitive information from what is available online.
The crime reporting map is a short-term view of crime: it provides a good sense of what is reported to be going on in a certain neighborhood or the city at large at any time. It is also good for seeing patterns of types of crimes happening (such as an unusual amount of reported bike thefts in your area).
The Police Reports Map will not link to a redacted narrative of a police report on every crime. However, every icon on the map will have a related General Offense (GO) number. You may use that number to request a copy of any unavailable report.
