Data Bites - September 2023

For this month’s Data Bites, we are going to explore a public dataset that we learned about during a recent public disclosure request related to Seattle Police Department records.

Via the Open Data Portal, the City of Seattle is striving to make their data open to the public with a goal of enabling those outside of government to find solutions to Seattle’s pressing civic challenges.

The Open Data Program makes some of the data generated by the City of Seattle available to the public for the purpose of:

• increasing the quality of life for our residents

• increasing transparency, accountability and comparability

• promoting economic development and research

• and improving internal performance management.

We used the open data portal to obtain police call records from 2016+ where the word “animal” was included in any piece of the record logs. While we’ve included a summary of our initial findings below, it’s important to note that a number of new questions have arisen now that we have this data. We’ll be exploring additional open data, public disclosure requests, and interviews with city data analysts to dig into this more over the coming few months.

Police Response Times:

• For incidents with "animal" in the initial call description, the average response time was 18.2 minutes

  • According to SaferWatch, Chicago has the quickest response times in the nation at just 3.46 minutes. Seattle is two times slower, with an average response time of 7 minutes. Response to animal-related calls are 160% longer than the city-wide average. Why?

• 9% (597 of 6650) of animal-related calls since 2016 were not responded to by the Seattle Police Department at all. Were these cases referred to the Seattle Animal Shelter?

* IP/JO = In Progress or Just Occurred. Typically calls reporting an activity that just occurred or is actively in progress get priority.

Call Types:

• 78% of all animal-related calls were initially called in as such and only 61% had a final classification as animal-related.

• Some cases were reclassified as assisting another agency, but there is no detail on what agency that is. Were “Assist County Agency” or “Assist State Agency” calls felony-level charges referred to the City Attorney’s Office? Are “Assist City Agency” calls simple parks enforcement charges sent on to the City Parks Department?

Domestic Violence & Animal Abuse:

11 cases were called in as animal-related but were converted to Domestic Violence calls. This is important because animal cruelty and domestic/intimate partner violence often go hand in hand. A perpetrator may use beloved animals to control and frighten their victim. But it raises the question…how often do officers come across a situation that spans both categories? How many animal cruelty charges have been dropped in favor of domestic violence charges?

34 cases were called in as domestic violence but converted to animal-related calls Why were these cases reclassified? Could the noisy animals be reacting to violence occurring in the home? A third of these cases resulted in finding a dead or injured animal, which is also interesting.

Overall, it’s really refreshing to have this data available for public query without having to go through the process and waiting game of a PDR. This quick and simple look into police call data has spurred more questions that we’ll look to address in an upcoming Data Bites article!