PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — Imagine you see a cop car on your street or in your neighborhood and you want to know exactly what's going on. In Pinellas Park, you'll soon have access to that information and all the police activity in that city.
Captain Adam Geissenberger with the Pinellas Park Police Department shows you what happens when you type in an address on a new system called Socrata.
"Socrata for us internally, for our police officers is a way for us to analyze our information in real-time to determine the need to re-deploy resources," Geissenberger said.
But for everyone else living in Pinellas Park, it's a window to what police are doing in and around your neighborhood.
"More often than not we'll get phone calls or messages on Facebook 'what was happening last night? I saw the police in front of my house,'" Geissenberger said. "Now with the new program they can log into the website themselves, they can pull it up on their phones and they can see as soon as the officers clear the scene what they were there for."
No more speculation, just the facts.
"Too often we'll see on social media where people will fill in the blanks because they don't have the information," he said. "We weren't quick enough with the information. With a tool like Socrata, it gives the public the opportunity to get the information for themselves without any opinion from anybody else about what really happened."
Right now this information is only available for Pinellas Park, but the police department is hoping neighboring agencies will invest in the technology so the officers can analyze crime trends in a wider area.
And, the people who live and work here can know exactly police are doing on a daily basis.
"Maybe it's a peace of mind, maybe it makes the end-user, the public, feel a little safer in their community knowing that although I don't see them, I know that they're there," Geissenberger said.
Pinellas Park Police just released access to this site starting today. Click here to see what it's all about.
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