ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Allentown officials this week launched a long-promised dashboard showing “very close to real time” data on crime throughout the city.
Mayor Matt Tuerk and Police Chief Charles Roca detailed the dashboard during a news conference Tuesday in City Council chambers, where they hailed its potential to build trust, transparency and accountability.
“It's grounded in the very simple idea that when people can see what's happening, they can start to trust that we're doing something about it."Mayor Matt Tuerk
The interactive tool has been in the works for more than a year. Its launch last week was “a deliberate step to help close the gap between residents and government,” Tuerk said.
“It's grounded in the very simple idea that when people can see what's happening, they can start to trust that we're doing something about it,” he said.
Roca, who took the Allentown Police Department’s top job in 2021, called the new dashboard “long overdue.”
The APD Incident Dashboard displays information on almost all crimes reported to city police, and lets users search by incident types and locations.
Incidents’ locations are displayed at the nearest intersection and not an exact address to provide anonymity, Roca said.
He said the dashboard will be updated each night.
Tuerk said he believes the dashboard “promotes [a] feeling of safety” among residents by making them more informed about where crime is happening in Allentown.
'Historic' data on display
The mayor has faced criticism from Councilman Ed Zucal, his challenger in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, who’s accused Tuerk of cherry-picking favorable crime statistics.
Incidents in the dashboard date to the start of 2024, which Tuerk and Roca have touted as having the lowest crime and homicide rates in years.
“It's an apples-to-apples comparison, but maybe … it's like [comparing] a Macintosh to a Granny Smith."Mayor Matt Tuerk on why the dashboard doesn't include data before 2024
Allentown officials said the city recorded four homicides last year and reported a significant drop in Part I crimes — homicide, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault — over the past decade.
But the dashboard only lets residents see what crime trends have looked like since the start of Allentown’s “historic” 2024.
It does not display statistics from 2023 — when the city recorded 17 homicides — or before.
Allentown Police Department last year started reporting crime statistics through the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, which asks officers to collect more geographic-based data for incidents.
Tuerk and Roca said they chose to launch the dashboard with about 18 months of data because older statistics are not as detailed and wouldn’t provide a completely accurate picture.
“It's an apples-to-apples comparison, but maybe … it's like [comparing] a Macintosh to a Granny Smith,” Tuerk said.
Officials in his administration are exploring other online dashboards, including one that displays city crews’ snowplowing efforts, according to the mayor.
