The Dallas Police Department database just went public. What can we now find out by logging onto the police website, and how will it make us more safe?
Citizens will definitely be more informed because now everyone has access to all of the crime reports generated in the city of Dallas. People can look in their neighborhood, their beat and where their friends live and read exactly what’s happening out there. You can search by block numbers of streets, and if you know your reporting area or the beat you live in, you can search that way, too. Or you can search by type of offense. So, for example, if you live in beat 211 and you want to search burglaries, you can see all reported burglaries in your area. (You should type in a shorter word like “burg” in the search box to have a better chance of everything coming up — burglary of a building, burglary of a habitation, etc. Go broad, and then you can narrow down.) You also can pull arrest records and 911 transcripts up. Anything that’s public information is on here, and it’s updated every day.
To search the database, visit dallaspolice.net and click on “public access.”
