York Regional Police Services Board is launching an online community safety portal in the coming weeks
The portal is a data-driven project, aimed at boosting transparency and community engagement, Deputy Chief Paulo Da Silva said during a presentation to the York Regional Police Services Board.
The interactive portal features maps, dashboards, an FAQ and help page, feedback section and official statistics, according to manager Greg Stanisci.
Community members will be able to view road safety maps, a crime trend dashboard and historical data from 2016 to 2020, with data updated nightly.
For instance, users will be able to access trends for 12 serious crimes over the past week, month, six months or year. Data can be filtered by municipality or police district to see the trends in any area of York Region.
“The community member can choose how they want to interact with these dashboards,” Stanisci said.
On the maps, users will be able to see incidents over the past seven days or up to a year with a chart that dynamically updates on the side as they move through the map around the region.
“This is a great way to start off your review of the crime trends in York Region,” Stanisci said.
You can also filter the map by crime type.
The map also features community safety alerts, specific to the area of map you are looking at. These refer to open investigations that could be of importance to the community and feature the details of the incident and even a link to submit a tip to Crime Stoppers.
“This is now a new way to interact with the community, making them feel a part of this investigation and the safety of their neighbourhood,” Stanisci said.
On top of increasing community engagement, he also said the new portal will be a valuable tool for academics and data analysts.
“This will definitely be a huge hit for academics and anyone who wants to provide and summarize crime to their own needs,” he said.
The portal will be available in several different languages including French, Chinese and Italian.
“You can see how flexible and accessible this product is to all the various languages people speak in York Region,” Stanisci said.
However, this mostly applies to the navigation through the portal right now as the maps and dashboard would require more advanced programming to feature other languages.
The portal is also expected to ease the burden on the Freedom of Information department by reducing the number of requests they receive.
The community safety portal is launching on YRP’s website during the week of Nov. 8, which is Crime Prevention Week.
