The Bellevue Police Department recently launched a police transparency and accountability website which shows recent neighborhood crime data, use of force incidents, and information about the department’s workforce diversity. The goal of the new website is to help strengthen trust between the police department and the community.
“We are happy to share this police data with our community members so they can become more aware of public safety issues and partner with us to develop solutions to make our community safer,” said Chief Wendell Shirley. “The public can log onto this new website and see real-time statistics and crime trends and be able to analyze the data that impacts them.”
The website information can be filtered by demographics, crimes, arrests, and location and date. Crime data is refreshed every 48 hours, according to BPD. Additionally, the website allows community members to connect with the department via email, and allows Bellevue residents to locate their sector captains by typing in an address.
The workforce diversity dashboard shows how there are 224 current employees at BPD, and several pie charts break down the workforce by race and ethnicity, and years of service.
According to the diversity dashboard:
- 70% are white (non Hispanic or Latino)
- 8% are Black of African American
- 8% are Asian (not Hispanic or Latino)
- 7% are Hispanic or Latino
- 4% are two or more races
- 2% identify as other
Furthermore, the diversity dashboard shows the gender identities of the workforce, with 26.79% identifying as female and 73.21% identifying as male.
The crime statistics dashboard breaks down crimes by crimes against persons, such as murder, rape, assault, or protection order violations; crimes against property, such as theft, burglarly, fraud, vandalism, or robbery; and crimes against society, such as drug violations, weapons violations, prostitution, or pornography.
As of July 6, the crime statistics dashboard shows that crimes against persons are down by 9% in the last 365 days. The dashboard also shows a 4% decrease in crimes against property within the last 365 days, and a 20% decrease in crimes against society within the last 365 days.
The use of force section of the website provides a brief overview of what use of force is, while going over use of force in Bellevue. According to the dashboard, in 2021 BPD responded to 62,023 calls, in which 79 responses (or 0.13% of the time) had some type of reportable force.
To learn more about the transparency and accountability website visit https://bpd-data.bellevuewa.gov/
