Thinking about police data: Analysts’ perceptions of data quality in Canadian policing

"The lack of buy in from frontline personnel, who are mainly responsible for data entry, poses a significant question as to how well police are committed to data-driven policing and the necessary data collection tasks. Having high quality data entered into police data management systems has profound implications for the subsequent data analyses and decisions police make based on analytical work."

The quote above is from the Police Journal paper  Thinking about police data: Analysts’ perceptions of data quality in Canadian policing, available at this link. So true!

Data quality is such a huge issue for analysts - it affects everything you do. The problems of getting data WORTH analyzing is significant. Frontline personnel are not simply data entry clerks - they are often police officers who are in a rush to go to their next calls. How can they be convinced to gather information that is important to policing? 

I think a common understanding of data is needed - reasons to collect quality data have to be articulated so that make sense to ALL of the stakeholders. That has not been done. There must be the will to do it if we are to have the data needed to improve public safety. 

All officers KNOW what a crime series is and they themselves can often recognize them if they are the collectors of such a pattern, but it is not their job to identify them. We need to create a shared understanding of the vale and role of information in the future of policing.