Our data sources
Every published statistic links back to the public dataset it came from, with the date it was last refreshed. Nothing prints without provenance.
Where does your crime data come from?
Two sources, combined: federal (FBI UCR and the NIBRS API) for nationally-comparable classifications, and local police open-data portals (typically ArcGIS / Socrata) for daily-fresh incident records at the block level. Coverage is city-by-city — where a PD publishes an open incident feed, we ingest it; where they don't, we fall back to UCR + NIBRS at the ORI level. Where sources disagree on counts, we cite both and show the source by stat.
All datasets we ingest
Each row: the dataset, who publishes it, what we use it for, how often it refreshes, and when we last refreshed our copy.
| Dataset | Used for | Cadence | Last refresh |
|---|---|---|---|
| FBI UCR + NIBRS APIFederal Bureau of Investigation | Nationally-comparable crime classifications + counts | Federal monthly | 2026-06-29 |
| Local PD open-data portalsCity police departments · typically ArcGIS / Socrata (expanding city-by-city) | Block-level incident records; repeat-address concentration | Daily where published | 2026-06-29 |
| U.S. Census ACSU.S. Census Bureau · American Community Survey | Population denominator, housing tenure, demographics | Annual | 2026-06-29 |
| State DOE school report cardsEach state's Department of Education (50-state coverage in build-out) | School quality grades, enrollment, performance | Annual (per state release schedule) | 2026-06-29 |
| Federal CRDCU.S. Dept of Education · Civil Rights Data Collection | School-based arrests + restraint, chronic absenteeism | Federal biennial | 2026-06-29 |
| NHTSA FARS + state DOT crash datasetsNational Highway Traffic Safety Administration + each state's DOT | Pedestrian crash incidents along walk-to-school routes | Federal annual + state cadence | 2026-06-29 |
| OpenStreetMapOpenStreetMap contributors | Pedestrian network, sidewalk coverage, signalized vs unsignalized crossings | Daily tile pull | 2026-06-29 |
| National sex-offender registryU.S. Dept of Justice · NSOPW | Offender distance to address, geocoded | Federal rolling | 2026-06-29 |
How fresh is the data?
Crime data refreshes daily wherever a city PD publishes an open incident feed — our ingest pipeline pulls each supported portal every morning. FBI UCR + NIBRS refresh on the federal cadence. Census ACS and state DOE report cards refresh annually on official release schedules. The federal CRDC refreshes biennially. OpenStreetMap tiles pull daily. Every neighborhood page shows the last-refreshed date per stat, not a blanket "as of" stamp.
How we treat the data
Public data arrives messy. The work is making it comparable.
Geocoding
Every incident, school, and crash record is geocoded to lat/lon and reverse-resolved to a neighborhood polygon so the map shows the right block, not a centroid.
Normalization
50+ feed schemas. Local PD codes don't match FBI NIBRS codes don't match state DOT crash codes. We normalize all of them to a single internal taxonomy before publishing.
Deduplication
The same incident can appear in two feeds (PD + FBI). We dedupe by date + lat/lon + classification so a single event isn't counted twice.
What data do you NOT use?
We refuse a few categories on purpose. They aren't oversights — they're choices.
What we don't ingest
- No social media. Nextdoor posts and Twitter chatter aren't public-safety signals.
- No anonymous reviews. Rumor without provenance doesn't go on the page.
- No paid data. If we have to pay a broker for it, we don't want it — the whole point is sourced, public data.
- No predictive scores. We publish what already happened. We don't model who might offend.
- No "safety score" from a third-party black box. If we can't show the formula, we don't publish the number.
Frequently asked
- Can I get the raw data?
- Yes — every dataset above is public. The table links to the publisher. We don't republish the raw feeds because the publishers already do.
- What about HOA or partner data?
- If we ever ingest a private dataset, we'll list it on this page with the same provenance fields and the access terms. As of 2026-06-29 we ingest zero private data.
- What if a stat looks wrong?
- Call (805) 900-0032 or email hello@findasafeplace.com. We'd rather correct a number than defend it.