From: Jason Tracy
Columbus
For several years now, I’ve been asking both the Columbus Police Department and the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department for more transparency regarding incidents in their jurisdiction.
While other cities have public interactive maps that will show you the type of incident and when it occurred, both of our local law enforcement agencies have declined to provide this service. Most of these services can be integrated into the existing law enforcement database, so it should not require more staffing to update the maps.
Columbus Regional Health has recently announced that they need to create their own police force, citing both an increase in the number of incidents at the hospital and slow response time from CPD.
If the law enforcement agencies had already been providing this information for the public to easily access, I’m sure CRH would have more support for this move, or perhaps CPD would have received more support to reduce response times through more funding.
When you also consider that many in the community support either defunding the police, or even abolishing the police, it has never been more important for the police to share more about the services they are providing.
There is no need for private details to be released. Simply the rough address within a quarter mile, with the type of incident, time reported, and the time elapsed before officers arrived would go a long way to building public support.
I hope all of these agencies reconsider this current lack of transparency and start publishing the information that shows both what they do, and how effective they are at doing it.
