2009.05.14
Roanoke Police "Wanted" list online: Too much information, or not enough?
The Roanoke City Police Department’s latest crime fighting tool is a pdf file.
Starting this week, the department is posting every 24 hours an updated list of people wanted for felonies, misdemeanors, parole violations, and so on. The one online as I write this is 76 pages.
It’s not the most detailed document, just a list of names with a gender and age by them. There’s no indication of the charges against anyone on the list. (There is a separate "Most Wanted" page that includes photos and charges.)
The pdf isn’t the friendliest format, either. How many people will scroll through a document that long? But it’s a logical move by the police department to get these names out there. In a story on the new practice in today’s paper by Amanda Codispoti, the police say getting these names before the public has led to people on the list being turned in, and even turning themselves in. A partial list used to be published in the now defunct Crime Tracker published by WSLS (Channel 10).
The Roanoke police and the The Roanoke Times don’t always agree on what the public ought to know about crime in the city. As newspaper people, we naturally want to know everything we can know, while the police tend to see more value in withholding certain information.
But year or so, the department has come around to sharing this kind of data on a regular if limited basis – they’re one source of the data in our crime database -- and that’s to be applauded.
I first looked at the wanted list with an eye for finding a way to co-opt it and turn it into a database to post in the DataSphere.
I’ve learned in my year and a half in this job that you all really like any data with names in it. And why not? We’re all curious about people in our community, and some are just plain nosey.
In this case, though, I decided it against it. Managing daily updates from data converted from a pdf is more than I have time to do, for one thing.
Plus, the information available is just incomplete enough to make a newspaper like mine uneasy. For me to post a list of names that simply says these people are wanted by police, without saying what for, and without enough information to distinguish the Jim Johnson or Sally Williams on the list from the one you know, that just seems fraught with potential for giving readers wrong or inflated ideas about real people.
As a data editor, I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to stuff like this.
Not everyone does.
In journalism circles, there was a big dustup recently over a website developed by the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times called mugshots.tampabay.com, which aggregates jailhouse mug shots from three different police departments. It’s updated frequently, it’s searchable, and, in a voyeuristic kind of way, fascinating.
You start looking at these people, what they’re charged with, sort them by age, gender, even height and weight, and it’s like me eating a bag of chips. Suddenly I’m at the bottom and I’ve wasted 20 minutes and put on another half a pound.
But is it journalism? some journos asked. Is this what newspapers ought to be doing? Isn’t it just generating Web traffic by sharing the faces of people who committed crimes that would never rise to the level of being covered by the paper?
In sum, is the St. Pete Times doing this just because it can?
And yet, no one seems to be asking those questions about the police departments themselves doing the exact same thing. Mug shots are different than names, of course. You can be interested in a picture of a person you know nothing else about. You don’t need to recognize the face, like you would need to recognize a name, to find the information useful or interesting.
The names and mug shots are also different in another key respect. The wanted list is intended to bring wanted people to justice. The people in the mug shots are already charged and in custody, which raises the question of why the police themselves post them. Maybe shaming the criminals is part of it. Police in other parts of the country have, in that interest, released names of drunk drivers or men patronizing prostitutes. And the Roanoke police post photos of people caught shoplifting.
But what do you think?
Am I too conservative about this stuff? Is there an argument for the police to be as careful as I’m being? Should they, for example, give more identifying information, like race, or height and weight, or a last known address? Or at least give the charges so you have a more precise idea of what to think of your friend or neighbor whose name is on the list?
You tell me.
The Roanoke Times didn't have much of a problem publishing the names of law abiding citizens, who passed a background check, and received a permit to carry a concealed gun. In fact their addresses were published too, just in case any actual criminals wanted to know where a good house to burglarize for guns was.
But the names of people wanted for committing actual crimes, that's too far?
Gimme a break.
Comment by Jeff — May 14, 2009 @ 6:11 pm
Funny thing is that a big PDF list from the police website isn't going to be seen by a lot of people, and it would seem that having those names in front of a lot of people would be the payoff when somebody says "hey, my roommate is wanted by the cops!". So it's a good public service for that information to be out there, but hardly "journalism" to run them in the paper. But is everything that runs in the paper "journalism"? Newspapers are also the repository of information of interest to the public, right? Paid obits aren't journalism, nor are The Latest Line point spreads, etc. Maybe just put that stuff online in a non-sensationalized way and help the police reach the audience they're looking for.
Now mugshots are a different story. The Tampa paper's defense of their product as "journalism" is laughable. It's a very slick implementation of the kind of things sites like Muggn.com and The Smoking Gun are doing, but it's still train-wreck voyeurism. Present the data on arrest demographics and it's journalism. Draw eyeballs to funny mugshots and it's just guilty fun.
Comment by Fred McDuff — May 14, 2009 @ 6:40 pm
Jeff, I'm probably wasting my breath by pointing out this distinction, but the concealed weapons permit database was published by our editorial department, which is a completely separate operation from the news department, where I work.
Fred, in defense of the St. Pete Times, the developer of the mugshots site didn't defend it as journalism. Rather, he said newspapers are in desperate times, and doing thing like the mugshots site just to drive traffic and help make money ought to be part of the equation.
Comment by Matt Chittum — May 14, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
Good point made by Jeff. Good point made by you and confirms Jeff's point. The editorial staff of the Roanoke Times is off base. I am surprised that sooo many in the editorial deptartment could be acquired in one organization. Extreme preemployment screening? Just a thought.
Comment by Mike — May 15, 2009 @ 12:22 am
I should add that I completely defend the right of our editorial department or anyone else to publish what is without question public information. At the same time, people in my position need to make prudent decisions about publishing such a huge database. It's not a publish or don't publish decision necessarily, though that is always the first consideration. You can delete key fields -- a precise address, for example -- and still get information before the public. In the case of the concealed carry permit database, I don't think any level of editing short of not doing it would have diminished the outrage of gun rights advocates. I think the mere fact of it drove the outrage -- and not surprisingly so. These are people who, after all, want to own and carry a gun in secret. Their secret was suddenly out -- or at least it was more out than they were accustomed to.
But people who do very common things like buy and sell property, obtain concealed carry permits, and other things that create a paper trail of records that are unquestionably public should remain mindful of that fact. You can go in the DataSphere right now and get a great level of detail on every property parcel in Roanoke, including the owner's name, the price the paid for it, who sold it to them, it's square footage, and more. Go to the Roanoke GIS, and you can get even greater detail, plus a photo.
True, there's a difference between a record being public and it being public AND easily accessible from any computer on the planet.
But given the march of technology in both the mass media and in the governments which maintain public records, it seems to me that public information is likely to become more easily accessible, not less, regardless of the level of outrage. That's certainly been the trend so far. If that wasn't the case, a job like mine that depends upon it wouldn't exist.
So as a citizen, what do you do? Get used to it? Raise hell and try to change it? Or in some instances, like concealed weapons, does that activity just go underground? That's certainly a possibility, that people will begin to keep things off the books to keep them secret. That's a risk of public information and the kind of transparency we value in this country. We like our government to be open so we can see what our government is up to, but open records don't just cut one way.
Comment by Matt Chittum — May 15, 2009 @ 10:32 am
LMAO... I think my ex-wife Elizabeth Caldwell is on that list!!!!
Life WIN.
Comment by Me — May 15, 2009 @ 1:11 pm
... nope wasn't here. Maybe next time.
Comment by Me — May 15, 2009 @ 1:17 pm
Ha ha. That was SO FUNNY when the concealed carry list was published. You start off with a group of already paranoid people who feel they need to "pack heat" to survive, and then shine a spotlight on them by revealing their identities!
Comment by Argis Regin — May 16, 2009 @ 9:18 am
I like how Jeff suggests that the people outed by the gun database were "law abiding citizens," yet the people on that wanted list are not.
Matt's point is valid - we have no idea what these people are charged with. And for that matter, even if they are charged with a crime, they might not be guilty. So until they have a trial and are found guilty, they're still law abiding in society's eyes as well.
I hate how many Conservatives can't argue a point while conceding another. Yeah, The Roanoke Times' Editorial Board screwed up by posting the list, even if it was public. But to say they "didn't have much of a problem" simply isn't true, because they took the list down and apologized for not considering the ramifications.
Also, Jeff suggests that somehow The Roanoke Times would be responsible if someone burglarized the gun owners house. Um, how about holding the potential burglar responsible?
Comment by Jay — May 17, 2009 @ 10:55 pm
Argis,
Paranoid? What do I have to be paranoid about, I have a gun??? Just because some choose to protect themselves does not make them paranoid. Does having a security system make one paranoid? How about a cell phone to call the police?
Also, it really did not come down until Christian's home address and the editors home address hit every forum in the country. Thanks to the Public GIS system. I always thought that had more to do with it then all the out rage.
Comment by TScottW — May 19, 2009 @ 9:06 am