APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – Appleton Police are looking to become more engaged with the community. One way they are doing that is with their crime dashboard.
It’s right on the Police website.
“We can see right now that assaults are down, burglaries are way down, drug arrests are down and OWI’s are down.”
Members of the community can click on the link on the homepage, and Chief Todd Thomas says they will be instantly connected to information on some of the bigger crime categories that the police investigate.
“Batteries, burglaries, motor vehicle thefts, sexual assaults and it is all real time.”
Thomas says it’s a public version of what they use to breakdown crime data at the police department. The site gives comparisons of data to show if certain crimes are increasing or decreasing over a period of time and show directly where crimes take place.
“You pull up the dashboard and look at the map and it will tell you the dates that they were reported and the incident numbers,” Thomas said.
Crime data can be sorted from the last 7 days to the last 120 days.
“Part of the process of us letting the neighbors know what is going on in their neighborhood.”
The site places a dot on a city map where the crime took place. Chief Thomas says that can help residents see all the activity in their neighborhood.
“A lot of people are just interested or maybe there is a perception that there are some bad things going on, now you can just pull up the website and look at the data.”
He says the public can even contact the police department for a copy of that incident report that they are interested in.
