St. John police published years of department data for the public to view as part of a national initiative to be more transparent with hate and bias crimes, Chief James Kveton said.
“If the information is available to the public anyway and there’s nothing to hide … why not just share?” Kveton said.
At least nine datasets with information dating back to 2005 are open to the public on the department’s website, including traffic stops, citations, arrests, calls for service, officer-involved shootings, community engagement, use of force and hate crime.
St. John joined 53 other law enforcement agencies across the country that published the hate and bias crime data as part of the Police Data Initiative.
Kveton said his department worked on making the information public after he went to Washington, D.C., in 2016 with other police chiefs across the country to discuss The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. One of the goals they talked about was data sharing, Kveton said.
With the help of IT staff, St. John started putting different datasets on the department’s website, most of which were programmed to be regularly updated, he said.
“Sharing it overtly like this, it saves resources, it saves time,” Kveton said.
The alternative is that someone comes to the police department to request information, then the department spends time and money locating the information, researching it, copying it and producing it, he said.
“This way, anyone can see it,” Kveton said.
Hate crimes, and crime in general, tend to be underreported, Kveton said.
“Sometimes people feel that they don’t want to bother the police or maybe it won’t be solved or they don’t want to be embarrassed. There’s a lot of reasons why people don’t report certain types of crime,” Kveton said.
Each year, the FBI releases its hate crime statistics where law enforcement agencies submit data to the reports. Between 2007 and 2016, Munster, Hammond, Highland and Portage reported at least one or more hate crime incident in their jurisdiction, the reports show. Indiana, however, is one of a few states with no specific hate crime legislation on the books.
By making this information public, people can be more informed in trying to prevent future situations, Kveton said.
According to St. John’s data, the department recorded two bias crimes, labeled “anti-black,” in 2005 and 2009.
Police were dispatched May 20, 2005, to the 11600 block of South Magoun Drive, according to a police report. A man who was delivering newspapers said another man approached him and “was making racial slurs,” the report states.
The man “struck” the newspaper deliverer “in the face with a closed fist, breaking his eyeglasses” and began hitting his car, the report states. The deliverer pushed back, cutting the man with a set of keys he had in his hand, according to the report.
When police talked to the man in question, he said the newspaper deliverer “had been playing very loud music in his car which disturbed (him) inside his residence” and had gone to confront him about the loud music when “a verbal altercation ensued,” the report states.
On Jan. 9, 2009, a woman reported to St. John police that her daughter was going to class at school “when she was shoved from behind as the suspect pushed past her,” a report states.
The person told her daughter “you’re walking too (expletive) slow” and said “why don’t you go back to Gary,” according to the report.
The daughter dropped off her books at a classroom and went to her locker when the person approached again and the two pushed each other, the report states.
“During the argument, suspect spit in victim’s face,” the report states.