The Community Justice Center (CJC), a collaborative between the City of Ithaca and Tompkins County to implement joint Reimagining Public Safety plans, is developing a new public safety dashboard. The new dashboard will provide up-to-date information on policing and public safety in the City of Ithaca and Tompkins County.
The CJC is inviting community members to submit ideas on what data points should be included in the new dashboard. Community members can submit specific data points or link to examples from other police departments or public safety agencies. Ideas submitted by the public will be considered alongside those planned by the CJC, Tompkins County Department of Emergency Response, Ithaca Police Department, and Tompkins County Sheriff's Office as well as other public safety agencies. This will be in addition to a dashboard sharing data from the District Attorney, Assigned Counsel, and Department of Probation and Community Justice.
The Community Justice Center is currently considering the following data points for inclusion in the dashboard:
- Police response by location
- Reported call type
- Observed call type
- Police response by time of day
- Total calls for service
- Responding agency (TCSO, IPD, Village LE, EMS)
Project Director of the Community Justice Center, Monalita Smiley stated, “This will be a one stop shop for people to learn about public safety resources in Tompkins County. During the initial Reimagining Public Safety planning process, it was determined that the dashboard would offer the public information about how law enforcement time is being spent, community trends over time, and more related to calls for service in any specific area.”
Ithaca Police Department Acting Chief Ted Schwartz stated, “The Ithaca Police Department dashboard has been live for a while now and includes data on calls and arrests, response locations, call volumes, and the number of officers on shifts. Partnering with the CJC to hear more from the community about what they’re looking for in a dashboard will allow for IPD’s data to be more available to the public and enable us to showcase a tool for the whole County. That way people will be able to have an even broader understanding of policing and public safety in our community.”
Director of the Tompkins County Department of Emergency Response Mike Stitley remarked, “We have an abundance of good data across all of our emergency response activities, I’m excited to put more information in the hands of the public and to share what an excellent job our emergency responders are doing in the field. This is a great opportunity to look at how equitably service is being delivered across the County and to see the types of emergencies that we’re responding to.”