We made an app which hits our API to search for Data Sources. Next, we are working on tools to grow the database exponentially. We have a proof of concept, and it's time to scale.

https://pdap.io ← check out the search function in context

https://newsletter.pdap.io/archive/press-release-122923/ ← read more, share with your friends

https://discord.gg/wMqex8nKZJ ← join the Discord if you want to chat with active PDAP members

Consider subscribing if you haven't yet! Our most recent edition went into some detail about a game-changing donation, and our first news citation. We're not far out from releasing an alpha of our app, for which we will need feedback, testing, and discussion. Exciting times!

https://newsletter.pdap.io/

March 22, 2023 and today is the beginning of the fourth and last full week of this research survey campaign. For those that have taken the survey and for those that have passed it along, Thank you very much. The survey campaign continues until the end of the month, March 31, 2023. Please, Connecticut POSTC-certified officers, please complete the survey if you have not yet, and EVERYONE, please share this posting to reach as many Connecticut POSTC-certified officers as possible. Thank you. Stay healthy!

Research Announcement

Research Participation Needed

Hello,

My name is André, and I retired as a Connecticut POSTC-certified municipal officer in February 2021. I am inviting you to participate in a research project. In 2015, The President's Taskforce on 21st Century Policing identified “Officer Training and Education” as a critical pillar in building police and community relationships through leadership training for all peace officers and using experts in the communities to help train officers. My research seeks to understand better how to enhance training outcomes.

Anonymous link to the study:

https://forms.gle/VLgakrbaFoLjwoxD8

Your identity and all answers provided are confidential, and the survey link is anonymous. The Aspen University IRB has approved this research.

Participants must be Connecticut POSTC-certified officers.

If you opt to participate, you may terminate participation at any time and for any reason.

If you have questions about this research, you may contact the research team via email:

Student Investigator: André Rosedale at andrerosedale@icloud.com

Please consider passing the anonymous link on to other qualified individuals for their participation in this study.

Good afternoon. Today begins week 3 of the research survey campaign. This survey examines a correlation between Connecticut POSTC-certified officers’ emotional intelligence and academic achievements. Academic achievements include both formal education and professional development. If you are a Connecticut POSTC certified officer and still need to take the survey, please take 5 minutes to complete the survey. LEO or LEO supporter, if you are seeing this posting, please take the time to share it on your social media platforms so we can reach as many Connecticut POSTC-certified officers as possible. Thank you, be safe.

Research Announcement

Research Participation Needed

Hello,

My name is André, and I retired as a Connecticut POSTC-certified municipal officer in February 2021. I am inviting you to participate in a research project. In 2015, The President's Taskforce on 21st Century Policing identified “Officer Training and Education” as a critical pillar in building police and community relationships through leadership training for all peace officers and using experts in the communities to help train officers. My research seeks to understand better how to enhance training outcomes.

Anonymous link to the study:

https://forms.gle/VLgakrbaFoLjwoxD8

Your identity and all answers provided are confidential, and the survey link is anonymous. The Aspen University IRB has approved this research.

Participants must be Connecticut POSTC-certified officers.

If you opt to participate, you may terminate participation at any time and for any reason.

If you have questions about this research, you may contact the research team via email:

Student Investigator: André Rosedale at andrerosedale@icloud.com

Please consider passing the anonymous link on to other qualified individuals for their participation in this study.

I've posted before about our "Request data" form. We've received some solid requests so far, and have been pairing requestors with known volunteers from Discord and elsewhere. You can see the public version here.

Now, we've released an accompanying form for volunteers. We get a few steady flow of people joining the Discord weekly, but it's not like potential volunteers check the server every day for notifications. If you have skills to share, please submit! We won't share your info, but we'll reach out if someone in the community needs data help.

A researcher has asked us for help locating data for five counties in Southeast Arkansas. I'm doing some investigation now, but could use a little help.

Right now, plain ol' internet research is most helpful. Down the road we may benefit from scrapers or data analysis.

If this sounds interesting, you can find the details in this Discord thread.

We published a new form for requesting data. If you want us to help you find records, give it a shot! We're tracking these requests individually for now, connecting them with volunteers or finding data ourselves depending on the situation.

If you're in Discord and you gave yourself a role in the #welcome channel, you'll start getting pinged as we get more requests. If you'd like to be notified when we need help with scraping, or to find data in your area, head to Discord! You can also DM me if you'd like to contribute in a different way.

Here's the Discord event: https://discord.gg/h37Nbpwf?event=1050105269880885270

We're going to have a working session on 12/15 at 6:30pm ET! If you haven't been sure how to contribute, this is a good opportunity to help. You don't need prior experience—just access to a computer for an hour at the time of the event.

Context: one of our volunteers has built an experimental machine learning pipeline. In an hour, we should be able to annotate a few hundred URLs and see how the model does.

If you'd like to do something concrete to improve our criminal justice system, you can contribute Data Sources! We're building a database of police agencies to organize and centralize criminal justice data. Right now we're crowdsourcing information, and need help from people with any skill level. Start at https://docs.pdap.io/.

If you can't spare the time to volunteer, you can make a recurring donation to help us stay afloat. Our new donation page is at https://pdap.io/contribute.html if you'd like to help test drive it. Insert wink emoji.

...d. Not reposting to fix the typo.

We've been heads-down hiring and preparing for our first year of full-time staff. It's time to show our work and plans! If you haven't checked out our website in a while, you can get a general idea from https://pdap.io.

In addition, we're excited to meet people from the community, learn about what you're working on, and hear your feedback. Bring a friend.

Our Discord: https://discord.gg/wMqex8nKZJ

RSVP to the event: https://discord.com/events/828274060034965575/1008840738001408121

All,

Yesterday we published the results of a 15-month investigation into how Vallejo police have continued to kill without consequences. This is a data-driven story that we thought may be of interest to you. We appreciate your readership, and look forward to your feedback!

— the team at Open Vallejo

Vallejo tolerated officers' mistakes. Then they killed again.

https://preview.redd.it/mmcx2ehrqea91.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fab09ea5610287d38f3e8d60ecaf3b23343f7ab

Vallejo residents have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate their police department's high rate of fatal shootings. In this first-of-its-kind investigation, Open Vallejo and ProPublica examined what happens after those killings occur — and how Vallejo compares to cities that have fallen under federal scrutiny.

This article is Open Vallejo's most comprehensive investigation to date. It is based on more than 15,000 pages of police, forensic, and court files related to the city’s 17 fatal police shootings since 2011. Most of these records were disclosed in response to dozens of public records requests and two lawsuits filed by this newsroom. When we reviewed those records we found a pattern of delayed and incomplete investigations, with dire consequences.

This is a portrait of a city where impunity became de facto policy.

READ MORE • NEWSLETTER • SUPPORT OUR WORK • CONTACT US

We need all the help we can get. If you can navigate websites, you have enough skill to help!

The first step is to join our discord and fill out the intake form. After that, check out these tasks:

• Add data to the scraper catalogue
• Help fix broken links in the scraper catalogue

For those with a bit more experience (Inspect element and basic website terminology), we need help testing our base scraper's readability. Check here for instructions.

Hi everyone,

A group of students from Cambridge University is developing CAUSE: a non-profit social media platform designed specifically for activists. We'd be delighted to hear your thoughts, and if you want to make your voice heard about development please do join as a Member today, for free.

Our website has launched, with more information here: https://cause.cx

Thanks!

So in "may-issue" states people can conceal-carry a gun if they have a permit/license to do so, which they can receive at the discretion of someone else (e.g., Sheriff's Office). Are there data on this? Any reason to think this information wouldn't be subject to FOIA?

I am curious what resources all of you guys use to learn more information about the police officers in your area. I'm think like court documents, complaints filed against an officer or police force and more public information on the authority in my town.

I'm repeating my issues here from the r/datasets sub:

Here is a link to a report (I have over 5500 of these).

I have two main issues which really revolve around the tool (Tabula) and lack of a better one, I'm using.

1. I cannot convert multiple PDFs at once, nor mass apply the same data field "template" to each file. I can select and load every file in to the conversion program. I can create a template in the system that is saved and can be applied to other PDFs. But I still have to manually apply the template for each file and convert them all one at a time; creating an XLS sheet for every file converted.

2. When I do convert a PDF to XLS, I cannot specify which data fields go to which cell. There is no mapping path functionality it seems. Instead, it takes the text recognized in each data field selection, and converts it to a visual "identical". So no Data Field 1 goes to cell B2, Data Field 2 goes to cell B3... it just makes a xls version of the PDF.

So again, really these revolve around the tool I'm currently using. Perhaps there are better ones out there that allow multiple PDF conversion and cell mapping but I'm at a bit of a loss rn. As it stands I would have to individually convert all 5500+ PDFs to XLS files, then format each one to a "combine-able" format, then pull them all in to one.

I know Adobe has a similar functionality with a PDF to XLS exporting tool. However, i dont want to drop 15 bucks to find out i cant do multiple PDFs at once and knowing i cant do any data-mapping; as the tool would just create a visual identical to the PDF. That would involve further cleaning, trimming and formatting.