Pittsburgh launches site to track crime
Pittsburgh police Thursday launched a new publicly available, online public safety tool, which provides a general overview of criminal activity that occurs across the city.
Data for 2023 is collected from the police bureau’s records management system and will be manually updated on a monthly basis to reflect the preceding month, police spokeswoman Cara Cruz said.
Cruz said the bureau’s goal is to establish “as close to a real-time data feed as possible.”
“By making comprehensive crime data publicly available and easily accessible, residents are better informed about their own neighborhoods, the city as a whole, and the work of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police,” police Chief Larry Scirotto said. “As chief, I am committed to driving accountability through transparency and the Police Data Portal is another building block toward that goal.”
The data portal can filter the information by police zone, neighborhood, crime type and date, Cruz said. All information is provided at the incident level.
Violent crimes of a sexual nature have been excluded from the data set, Cruz said. No personal identifying information is attached to the incidents; all locations are referenced by “block level,” meaning that no specific addresses are made public.
Justin Vellucci is a TribLive reporter covering crime and public safety in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. A longtime freelance journalist and former reporter for the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, he worked as a general assignment reporter at the Trib from 2006 to 2009 and returned in 2022. He can be reached at jvellucci@triblive.com.
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