NORTHAMPTON — As more and more information becomes available online, some police departments aren’t getting left behind.
Since becoming Northampton police chief in 2015, Jody Kasper has been an advocate for making information about the department’s activities easily accessible to the public through an open data portal on its website. The department tracks arrests, officers’ use of force, employee and motor vehicle driver demographics, and responses to overdoses, among many other data points.
Kasper’s passion for providing such access to information has inspired a recent piece she penned, titled, “Is the Police Data Initiative Right for Your Agency?” in the monthly Police Chief magazine.
In the piece, Kasper addresses the history of open data portals and gives step-by-step instructions for departments looking to adopt a similar practice.
Shortly before Kasper became police chief, then-President Barack Obama established a task force to study effective policing practices and community-police relations. Six months after the task force was formed, its final report on 21st-century policing was released.
“When we joined the (White House) Police Data Initiative, I thought it was a really excellent initiative,” Kasper said Thursday.
The NPD was only the 55th agency in the United States and the first in Massachusetts to participate in the initiative.
Starting the program at the Northampton Police Department didn’t cost any additional money, Kasper said. The first step to implementing the program was to discuss what information they thought was important and what details should be included.
“Even that process alone, collaborating with community members, was a really good process,” Kasper said. “I thought it was valuable.”
It didn’t stop there, though. Kasper and other members of the department then spent time pulling data together into spreadsheets so there was enough information to create a fuller picture over time. Now that the open data portal has been established, Kasper and others in the department add information to the NPD’s data files daily as calls arise.
“I’m passionate about being the best department that we can be and there is a lot of different components that can go into that,” she said.
In her piece, Kasper writes about the importance of what the task force identified as the first pillar, “Building Trust & Legitimacy.”
“The importance of this pillar cannot be overstated. Any successful law enforcement agency today rests on a foundation of trust, accountability, and professionalism,” Kasper wrote. “One effective strategy at building trust and legitimacy with community members is for police administrators to pull back the blue curtain and allow open access to information regarding agencies’ activities.”
In addition to building trust and accountability, Kasper wrote that a second benefit of having an open data platform allows for agencies to share their own narratives.
Instead of just releasing raw numbers open for interpretation, Kasper said the portal helps provide context. A decrease in arrests one year may not mean that the department is being less tough on crime, but rather that it’s short-handed, Kasper said.
“It’s nice to be able to provide information that we believe has impacted the data that is out there,” she said.
Kasper is no stranger to publishing articles about her profession and said it’s important to share information on things that work.
“When you become a police chief, there’s different roles that you have. One is to be a leader of your people in your building. One is to be a leader for your community members and another is to be a leader for other police leaders,” she said. “What happens in a police department in any other city or state in the country, impacts my police department, as you can see when things happen across the country.”
She added, “We’re kind of all on the same team in that we’re working together all trying to do the best that we can do and bring forward the best programs that have the best outcomes and working on some really different issues we are faced with now.”
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.