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1/2/22: New Year Recap
by Josh Chamberlain
Happy New Year!
In brief, the story is this: we have a small group of people making excellent progress toward our mission—but this is a big project. If you're reading this, you can help us.
What happened in 2021?
- We had dozens of open working sessions. Some of them were quiet, with one or two people making progress. Some of them were brainstorms, where people disagreed and learned from each other. These happen in Discord, and you should join one! Look for the calendar icon and "Events" in the upper left.
Our goals for 2022
Write more Scrapers.
The more Scrapers we have, the more we have learned about the landscape of police data.
Here are our current Scrapers. Each one has the potential to shed light on an individual department; together, they can transform our understanding of police at the county, state, and federal level.
Move the roadmap forward.
Our next step is a repeatable template for standalone scrapers that are useful by themselves. These are useful right away as instant bulk downloads of departmental data.
From, we will be able to aggregate the results of the scrapers into still more useful combinations—what if we could search for extractions by
data_type or county?We also need to find one or two permanent Python developers to help us make steady progress on basic infrastructure. Here's our roadmap. If this is you, reach out to [email protected] or in Discord.
Create a modern, open community.
We have a small non-profit with a board and a few people dedicated to keeping the lights on; we want our volunteer community to consist of people with skin in the game, and agency over how things work.
We can use web3 technology to create tools that are decentralized, transparent, and traceable—and reward contributors.
How to help
Join our Discord community! Ask questions, share your knowledge, join open sessions. Everything you see is built by volunteers, and this could include you. In particular we need python developers and people who know how to secure non-profit funding.
Tell your friends and trusted network. Your word carries weight with people who trust you.
Stay tuned—we're picking up momentum, and expect big progress this year!
Last modified 5mo ago