The Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office debuts new community tool

Relevant, timely and accurate information, Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry L. Clayton and the Sheriff’s Office have unveiled a new tool in their continued commitment to have an open and engaged relationship with the community, neighborhoods and the people they serve in Washtenaw County.

The WCSO announced the public unveiling of the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office Data & Information Public Dashboard.

“Since January 1, 2009, we have been guided by several core values,” Clayton said in the announcement. “The WCSO Data and Information Dashboard is the latest example of our ongoing commitment to our value of openness and engagement with the communities we faithfully serve.”

In a video announcement on the sheriff’s webpage, Clayton said the intent of the Data and Information Dashboard is to provide community members with relevant, timely, and accurate information regarding criminal activity, enforcement efforts, and outcomes related to the services provided by members of the Sheriff’s Office.

The Data and Information Dashboard development team says it set out to design a straightforward user interface. The WCSO said it focused on providing complete, accurate, and relevant information in a format that is easy to understand and easy to navigate.

The dashboard has five pages: crime overview, victim demographics, arrest demographics, traffic overview, and subject control. Each page features a map, several metrics, and various ways to the data. It has data for the three prior years plus the current year. Crime data is updated weekly while subject control data is updated bi-weekly.

Here is more from Clayton’s and the WCSO’s announcement:

“Our hope is that each visit to the site provides you the information you need to fully understand how your Sheriff’s Office functions and the impact we are having in the community. We know this is a lot of information to take in and that there will be many questions. We’ve created a frequently asked questions page, a definitions page, a dashboard guide, and provided a site-specific email address (sheriffdashboard@washtenaw.org) that we will monitor for questions related to your visit to the site. In the coming weeks we will also host one of our Community Education Series (CES) events, where we plan to focus on walking through the dashboard in detail.”

“Although the site is active, we do not consider our work complete. Our team will continuously seek feedback, assess the efficacy and usefulness of the tool, and modify as necessary to enhance the user experience.”

“Ultimately, our goal is to provide a site that serves as another tool to support our mission of Co-creating Community Wellness and Safety, Providing Exemplary Service, and building strong and sustainable communities.”

To learn more, go to https://www.washtenaw.org/3916/Sheriffs-Office-Data-and-Information-Das?fbclid=IwAR16c4IoF3nllY-uWnwNkSKt2gc-_BV0N-lFZfe_2cvjs3qLpTFPSwccfZk.