Methodology

Every official record on CrimeHalo comes from a public government or police dataset. CrimeHalo collects those records automatically, stores them in a normalised form and shows them as the agency published them. CrimeHalo does not create, edit or complete agency records, and does not receive any private feed.

The full list of datasets, with the basis each is used under, is on the data sources & rights page.

Agencies record time differently: some publish when an event occurred, others when it was reported, received, dispatched or published. CrimeHalo keeps the original meaning and labels it, rather than flattening everything into one timestamp. Where a source only gives a date, the record is marked as date-only rather than shown as a precise moment.

CrimeHalo shows a location only as precisely as the source provides it. Some agencies publish a block or intersection, some publish an area or division, and some withhold the location entirely. CrimeHalo never invents, guesses or geocodes a point for a record that does not have one, so area-only records appear in the list without a map pin.

A verified incident report and a live dispatch call are different things. A dispatch call reflects what was reported to the agency at the time; it may later be reclassified or found to be unfounded. CrimeHalo keeps the two apart everywhere: on the map, in the list and on the incident page.

Freshness describes how current a source is, not whether the city is available. A city can be fully open on CrimeHalo and still be labelled delayed because its agency publishes in batches. Freshness labels are drawn from how the source actually behaves.

A CrimeHalo Brief is a short, readable summary written only from the structured facts in the incident record: the event class, the agency's own wording and category, the approximate location, the agency, the timestamps, any explicit status, disposition or priority, and linked records.

A Brief never states injuries, deaths, arrests, victims, suspects, weapons beyond the source wording, motive, guilt, resolution, whether something is ongoing, traffic effects or cause. Where the source record is thin, the Brief says so plainly rather than filling the gap. Briefs are re-written when the underlying facts change, and earlier versions are kept.

Community reports and community discussion are written by CrimeHalo users. They are always labelled, always visually separated from official records, and never change an agency record, a classification or a Brief. How much a record is discussed is community activity, not evidence, and never makes a record verified, important or ongoing.

If an official record is wrong, the correction has to come from the publishing agency — CrimeHalo reflects the source. If CrimeHalo has presented something incorrectly, tell us on the contact page and we will fix it.