When Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2011, he made a major policy decision to increase police transparency by releasing NOPD calls for service data to the public online through the City’s Open Data Portal. The move made raw police data available to the public for the first time and allowed individuals and groups to examine and analyze police responses and interactions throughout the city.

Since then, the NOPD has led the way in making criminal justice data available and easily accessible to the public. Just last year, The Sunlight Foundation – a national, non-profit organization focused on government transparency and accountability –touted the NOPD as being “ahead of the curve” on open data. The organization called the amount of data the NOPD publishes online “uncommon” and said the department has “excelled in producing criminal justice data.”