Hamilton County Sheriff Launches New Crime Dashboard App

Hamilton County residents have two more ways to monitor crime situations and contact the Sheriff’s Office.

On Wednesday, the office unveiled a new crime data dashboard and mobile app, which are now available to the general public.

“We believe the public should be able to see what’s going on in their neighborhood,” Sheriff Austin Garrett said at a news conference.

The costs to launch both the desktop and the app came from a state grant for violent crime intervention, Garrett said. The desktop license cost $42,887, and the app license cost $24,985, according to the office. There will be recurring costs to maintain both platforms that can’t be covered by a one-time grant.

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DATA PANEL

The dashboard includes crime data for unincorporated parts of the county going back three years and will be updated daily at midnight, Garrett said. It does not include data from municipalities in the county, such as Chattanooga or East Ridge.

Users can view data for different time periods, compare changes in the number of specific offences and filter the data by their postcode or street.

“If crime is up, we want you to know,” Garrett said. “It’s not something we want to keep a secret.”

On the map, crime data is visualized as hot spots. Zooming in allows users to see information about individual incidents. The data is anonymized to protect victims, officials said.

“We get calls all the time from people looking to move to Hamilton County,” Deputy Chief Mark Hooper said during a news conference, “asking about crime statistics in their area.”

This tool will allow people to analyze these statistics for themselves, Hooper said.

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Other dashboards, such as Chattanooga’s police incident data dashboard, pull data from calls. The sheriff’s office dashboard only includes incidents where a report was written, not all calls for assistance, said crime analyst Jessica Ellsmore.

The panel has been years in the making — Ellsmore said she created the first demo in 2019.

It appears to be one of the first of its kind in Tennessee, officials said. Crime analysts have sought inspiration from panels at larger agencies such as Los Angeles and New York.

“We just had to Google it,” Ellsmore said in an interview.

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Ellsmore said the dashboard will also be helpful to sheriff’s deputies who use crime analysts’ data on crime trends and hot spots.

Eventually, the dashboard could include data from cities and towns within the county, office spokesman Matt Lea said after a news conference.

The dashboard also features a polling feature where residents can submit ideas and feedback to the platform.

MOBILE APPLICATION

The Sheriff’s Office has also developed a mobile app, available on iPhone and Android devices.

Through the app, users can submit crime tips, search for active arrest warrants, look up prison and inmate information, and request reports.

The app will also send alerts about critical events and weather conditions that could pose a potential threat to the public, software specialist Spencer Smith said in an interview.

There are also links to the crime data dashboard, resource directory, and information on fraud, animal welfare services, recruitment, and office policies.

Contact Ellen Gerst at [email protected] or 423-757-6319.