Hamilton County residents have two more ways to keep tabs on crime and communicate with the sheriff’s office.
The office Wednesday introduced a new crime data dashboard and a mobile app, now available to the public.
“We believe the public should have the ability to see what’s happening in their neighborhoods,” Sheriff Austin Garrett said at a news conference.
Startup costs for both the dashboard and app came from a state grant for violent crime intervention, Garrett said. The dashboard’s license was $42,887, and the app’s was $24,985, according to the office. There will be recurring costs to maintain both platforms. Those expenses can’t be covered by the one-time grant.
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DATA DASHBOARD
The dashboard has crime data for the unincorporated parts of the county going back three years and will be updated every day at midnight, Garrett said. It doesn’t include data from the municipalities inside the county, like Chattanooga or East Ridge.
Users can look at the data in different time frames, compare how the number of certain offenses has changed and filter by their own zip code or street.
“If crime is up, we want you to know,” Garrett said. “That’s not something we want to keep under wraps.”
On a map, crime data is visualized as hot spots. When zooming in, users can see information about individual incidents. The data is anonymized to protect victims, officials said.
“We get calls from people wanting to relocate to Hamilton County all the time,” Deputy Chief Mark Hooper said during the news conference, “asking about crime stats in a particular area.”
This tool will let people explore those statistics themselves, Hooper said.
Other dashboards, like Chattanooga’s police incident data dashboard, pull data from calls. The sheriff’s office dashboard only includes incidents in which a report was written, not all calls for service, crime analyst Jessica Elsmore said.
The dashboard has been in the works for years — Elsmore said she made the first demo version in 2019.
It appears to be one of the first of its kind in Tennessee, officials said. Crime analysts looked at dashboards for larger agencies, like Los Angeles and New York, for inspiration.
“I mean, we had to just Google it,” Elsmore said in an interview.
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Elsmore said the dashboard will also help the sheriff’s own deputies, who look to crime analysts for data on crime trends and hot spots.
Eventually, the dashboard may incorporate data from cities and towns within the county, office spokesperson Matt Lea said after the news conference.
The dashboard also has a survey function where residents can submit ideas and feedback on the platform.
MOBILE APP
The sheriff’s office also developed a mobile app, available on iPhones or Androids.
Users can submit crime tips, search active warrants, look up jail and inmate information and request reports through the app.
The app will also send alerts for critical incidents and weather that pose a potential threat to the public, software specialist Spencer Smith said in an interview.
It also has links to the crime data dashboard, a resource directory and information on scams, animal services, recruitment and the office’s operational policies.
Contact Ellen Gerst at egerst@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6319.