Update: LA Times: Crimes Missing from LAPD Map

Thursday LAPD Chief William Bratton thanked the LA Times (pdf) for its investigation which revealed that many crimes listed in department summaries did not appear on the department's online maps. Bratton pointed to contractors as the source of the error. PSOMAS and Lightray are currently working to fix the problem. In the meantime, the site remains up. Sadly, the whole effort may mean less access to data instead of more. Bratton has asked the city attorney to look into the terms by which the LA Times had access to the crime listings. He suggests having to make this data available to anyone might put undue burden on the department. - LA Times

--- original post 7/9/09 --- The LAPD's contractor found a geocoding error on its online mapping system after the LA Times highlighted the errors back in April. (APB coverage) That put some crimes in the wrong location. It's since been fixed. Now, the Times reports many crimes (40% of the total) that are reported elsewhere are simply not on the map at all. Contractor PSOMAS told the Times Wednesday the company had identified an inadvertent programming error and fixed it. Still, the Times says missing data has yet to be added to the map.