Access to Police Department crime reports and a suggestion to the Town Council about creating a Public Collaboration Committee

An Open Letter to Watertown Officials:

Hi Mr. Town Manager, Chief Deveau, members of the Honorable Town Council and other Town Department Heads,

I could not find email addresses for all Department Heads on the Town website. Please forward as appropriate.

As some of you may be aware, I have have been corresponding with Capt. Rocca and Officer Knell of the Watertown Police Department by email and phone in regards to having granular crime report datasets for the Watertown Police Department made publicly available in a digital format.

I have a message that I think relates to everyone on this list, but a little backstory first:

I sent my initial request for detailed Watertown crime report information on April 26 of 2011. I had a conversation by phone with Capt. Rocca on May 27 - I had asked Capt. Rocca to give me permission to audio record the conversation, he declined so I had someone else in the room with me who transcribed the speaker phone call.

The documentation for these conversations and emails can be found here:http://www.mattmacdonald.com/2011/05/11/getting-access-to-police-incident-logs-from-a-computer-aided-dispatch-system/

I am writing to you after a conversation I had with Capt. Rocca on May 27 during which Capt. Rocca stated that he is unable to answer my questions. During this conversation I asked how I could get my questions answered and then asked who would be able to provide answers. Capt. Rocca stated that I would need to talk with Chief Deveau and the Town Manager. I was clearly told that I do not have the right as a citizen to direct a city employee in their work.

I completely agree, and tried to make it clear to Capt. Rocca that while I feel strongly that the Police Department should have a policy and culture of collaboration with the public, that I am asking for this information, not directing him.

I understand without question that citizens can only make requests of their public employees, the work of a specific town employee is directed by their supervisors and ultimately the Town Chief Executive Officer.

During the past six weeks I have had numerous email and phone conversations with members of the Watertown Police Department about this information request. I understand that this level of data sharing and the proposed method is unfamiliar territory for the Watertown Police Department and that a request of this nature could be seen as an "custom," "challenging," or "setting new precedent."

Technical hurdles, policy issues, legal challenges and employee time/cost have all been brought up during my conversations with Capt. Rocca and Officer Knell. I have spent significant time learning about the computer aided dispatch system, crimereports.com and internal data reporting systems and processes in hopes that I would be able to overcome the hurdles, issues, challenges and costs to learn more about our town.

There has been a deflection or non-response from Capt. Rocca for each of my proposed suggestions that specifically address his stated concerns. During these conversations the standard response is "I don't know about such things Matt." or "I'm going to have to verify that." I have suggested what I believe is a reasonable, cost effective, technologically viable, legal method for re-publishing the data that the Watertown Police Department is currently paying $1,200/year to crimereports.com for them to have access.

I have raised concerns that tax payer monies are being sent to a private corporation and that the dataset that crimereports.com is using is not made available to the general public. The legal Terms of Use provided by crimereports.com prevents me, a citizen of Watertown, access to the same information in any way other than via their website. The response from Capt. Rocca after I provided a reasonable method for the public to have access to this more granular information included a veiled threat that this information might no longer be available when he said "We provide crimereports.com as a service to the public but given the budgetary times maybe we need to think about cutting it."

The challenge that I will never be able to provide a solution for is how to change the current information sharing and community collaboration policies of the Watertown Police Department.

A proposal to the Town Council and all department heads:

The Town Manager stated publicly during the FY 2012 annual budget overview that Watertown is implementing a program for Performance Measurement. Also in that same document the Honorable Town Council's Budget Policy Guideline states that the town will be performing a study of the Pubic Safety departments with the focus being on the future delivery of service.

I believe that if encouraged more citizens in Watertown would take an active interest in collaborating and participating with our local government. We get the government we deserve – but we also can encourage our government to help us care.

I would like to see the following occur:

1. The Town Council work with the public to draft and adopt a resolution that encourages all departments in Watertown to share information in more useful ways so that the government and public can better collaborate and offer more informed opinions and solutions.
2. The Town Council consider creating a Public Collaboration Committee which would be directed to identify ways in which the Watertown government can better encourage, solicit and work with the citizens of Watertown to improve our community.
3. An acknowledgment from the Town Manager, department heads and Town Council that events like the Public Safety study are opportunities for Watertown to tap into the collective abilities of our community and that increased access to information and data about our local government can only increase our shared knowledge, allowing us to make more informed decisions.

I hope that you would read this article from Beth Noveck, who revolutionized the US Patent Office using collaborative processes with public and private sector scientists and professionals. Beth is a much better writer than I am, has been thinking about this much longer and has solid, implemented experience in this area:

http://cairns.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/whats-in-a-name-open-gov-we-gov-gov-20-collaborative-government.html

She also has just written a book about this topic called Wiki Government which I have requested on inter-library loan.

Thanks,
Matt MacDonald