When a police department's reputation lives entirely in headlines and neighborhood group threads, the loudest story wins - and the loudest story is rarely the representative one. Residents deserve a better source than rumor, and departments doing good work deserve a way to show it that doesn't depend on a press office.
This infographic explains, in community-facing language, why a department chooses to publish its scores on an opt-in public transparency page. Every rating on the page comes from a resident who actually interacted with an officer and completed a survey that takes under a minute, available in 26+ languages, with no personal information collected. That verification is the whole point: the page shows what people who dealt with the department actually said, not what anyone with an opinion posted. Publishing is a department's way of claiming trust with data - putting its numbers where residents can see them, in good months and hard ones. Share it when a public page launches, post it alongside the department's link on social media, or hand it to local press asking what the scores mean.
To see how the underlying survey works from the resident's side, visit our survey feature page.
