Public Record Data Extracts

Important information about the Public Record Data Extracts

• In an effort to be transparent, the Sacramento Police Department provides the public access to all of the different fields that are completely public and available for release. There are limitations based on the crime type as well as laws governing the confidentiality of specific pieces of data. All information is pulled from the Police Department Records Management System (RMS) and the Computer Aided Dispatch system (CAD).

• Because this data is produced via a complex set of processes, there are many places where errors can be introduced into the data that you will be downloading. The margin of error in this data is approximately 10%. Please keep this in mind when working with these data extracts. No representation is made or implied regarding the accuracy of the data being made available.

• Complete copies of Crime Reports and automobile collision reports are not generally available to the public. To obtain a copy of either, you must have a legitimate right and need to know. In other words, to receive a crime report you have to be the involved victim; for an automotive collision you have to be one of the parties named in the automotive collision report, or an attorney representing an interested party, an insurance agent representing an interested party, or some other agent acting on behalf of a named involved party. Copies of crime reports may require a subpoena with good notice to the consumer to obtain a complete copy. Every report is released individually based on the totality of the request and circumstances, crime type and all applicable laws.

• The Police Department is providing this data for download under the assumption that you have the computer skills necessary to understand operations like unzipping compressed files, opening data extract files, building queries, creating reports for output to a printer, etc. The Police Department does not have staff available to assist you in downloading, using, or interpreting this data.

• It is against State law (Government Code Section 6254) for us to provide victims’ addresses for certain classes of crimes (primarily rape, sex or abuse-related crimes). Since the address field in the data extracts is usually that of the victim, confidential reports and calls for service will have the address redacted for the affected entries. You can research activity for those types of crimes, but location information in these instances will be limited to patrol district, patrol beat, or patrol grid. This applies to the following crimes:
  
  
  • 220 - Attempted Rape
  • 261, 262, 264 – Rape
  • 273 - Domestic Violence/ Child Neglect 
  • 286 – Sodomy
  • 288, 289 - Other Sex Crimes  
  • 422 - Terrorist Threats
  • 646.9 – Stalking
    
    The following is complete listing of crimes that can be researched:
    220, 236.1, 243.4, 261, 261.5, 262, 262(a)(1), 264, 264.1, 265, 266, 266(a), 266(b), 266(c), 266(e), 266(f), 266(j), 267, 269, 269(a), 273(a), 273(d), 273.5, 285, 286, 288, 288(a), 288.2, 288.3, 288.5, 288.7, 289, 422.6, 422.7, 422.75, 646.9, 647.6, as well as Welfare and Institutions Code 5150 or Business and Professions Code 729(a).

• We began using a new Records Management System (RMS) in February, 2004. This system manages all crime and incident reports for the Police Department. As a result, our data extracts have a different format when compared to previous years. The biggest difference you'll notice is how the reports are classified. We now use a combination of FBI UCR (Uniform Crime Report) codes and State codes. See the Helpful Code Definitions section on the Dispatch and Crime Report Data Extracts explanation page.
  
  
• Most law enforcement agencies have pre-defined areas for assignment and reporting purposes. For many years, the Sacramento Police Department has named these areas Patrol Sectors, Patrol Districts, and EDP's (Electronic Data Processing districts). In 2006, these areas were renamed. Sectors are now called Districts, Districts are now called Beats, and EDP's are called Grids. Districts are the largest of the areas; the city is divided into 6 Districts. The Districts are divided into Beats, which are assigned to patrol officers. The Beats are divided into Grids for reporting purposes. Over the years, the various boundaries have changed, but the Grids have not changed significantly. As confusing as this all sounds, this information will be necessary when working with the data extracts. See the Map of Sacramento Neighborhoods and Police Beats.

• The data contained within these extracts are not intended to be directly compared with the official UCR statistics reported by the Sacramento Police Department to the California Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of investigation. Contributing factors include reclassification and/or amendments of dispatch call types and report crime class codes due to investigative clarification.