National News
Asheville, Buncombe NC crime databases offer access to public records
November 04, 2013 posted by Steve Brownstein
Two relatively new online databases, from the Asheville Police Department and Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office, offer extensive access to crime reports. Both use a program called Police to Citizen (or P2C) that allows users to look up information on crimes in their neighborhoods and search for alleged and convicted offenders by name.
Buncombe’s P2C has been online for a little more than a year and was recently enhanced to include more thorough information, according to Kim Pruett, Buncombe County’s director of information technology. Asheville’s P2C, implemented in collaboration between Asheville and Buncombe IT staff, was launched in August.
Using an automated system, the databases are stocked with information and reports filed by APD officers and Buncombe deputies in the course of their regular record-keeping duties — so little additional work is required to make the data available online.
“I think it’s fantastic that even a sensitive area like policing has recognized that when a record really is open, automating the distribution of it is a good idea,” said Jonathan Feldman, the city of Asheville’s IT director.
One the one hand, the data shared is public under North Carolina’s open-records law, he said (non-public information, such as the names of minor offenders and certain crime victims, is not shared through P2C). On the other, the costs of manually disseminating those records to interested parties are diminished while enhancing public access.
Navigating the databases can seem complex at first. Here’s a guide to the main options and how to use them. In addition to the features highlighted here, the sites have up-to-date information on missing persons, crime alerts and “most wanted” suspects.
Both sites offer incident and arrest reports dating back for one year, and allow users to narrow their searches to any date range within that year. The APD’s site also includes reports on motor-vehicle accidents.
To see the most recent reports, click the “Daily Bulletin” tab at the top of any P2C page. That provides access to listings of the day’s incident and arrest reports, along with case numbers that can be used to find more information with the search features described below.
On the APD’s site, there’s also a tab for “Crash Reports” that allows users to search for accident reports, and one for “Arrests” that shows information about the department’s most recent arrestees.
