The following overview refers to the dataset posted here: https://data.sfgov.org/d/wg3w-h783

Summary

The dataset includes police incident reports filed by officers and by individuals through self-service online reporting for non-emergency cases. Reports included are those for incidents that occurred starting January 1, 2018 onward and have been approved by a supervising officer.

Incident reports filed by officers must be approved by a supervising officer. Once approved and electronically signed by a Sergeant or Lieutenant, no further information can be added to the initial report. A supplemental report for additional information or clarification will be generated if necessary.  This means that an individual status will not change on an initial report but may be updated later through a supplemental report. Differentiating among report types can be done using the “Report Type Code” and “Report Type Description” fields.

Incident reports filed online will also be reviewed by a supervising officer.  Once approved and electronically signed by a Sergeant or Lieutenant, no further information can be added to the initial report. A supplemental report for additional information or clarification will be generated if necessary. This means that an individual status will not change on an initial report but may be updated later through a supplemental report. You can filter those reports using “Filed Online” as well as the report type fields mentioned above.

Reports can be removed from the dataset in compliance with court orders sealing records as well as for administrative reasons like an active internal affairs – administrative and/or criminal investigation.

Report types and incidents

Reports can come from one of three sources. These are discernable through the “Report Type Description” and “Report Type Code” field:

1. Initial: The first report filed for the incident
2. Vehicle: A special incident report related to stolen and/or recovered vehicles
3. Coplogic: Filed online by an individual

Each report can either be an initial one or a supplement. These can also be discerned through the “Report Type Description” field:

1. Initial
2. Initial Supplement
3. Vehicle Initial
4. Vehicle Supplement
5. Coplogic Initial
6. Coplogic Supplement

Supplemental reports

Supplemental reports are issued to provide additional incident information or to clarify a mistake in the initial report. For example, a supplemental report may be issued to show an arrest was made, a missing person was found or to provide additional details of property taken in a theft.

Relationship of incident codes to reports

Incidents can have one or many associated Incident Codes. For example, an officer may have a warrant for an arrest and while making the arrest discovers narcotics in the individual’s possession. The officer would record an incident code for the warrant as well as the discovery of narcotics.

For this reason, Row ID is unique across rows, but Incident ID and Incident Number are unique to an incident and can be duplicated within the dataset. Put another way, the dataset represents a flattened representation of these 1 to many relationships.

Mapping coordinates

Coordinates are provided within the dataset where feasible. Coordinates could be missing for the following reasons:

• Invalid addresses - addresses submitted by officers pass through validation, however, the online submission does not validate addresses on entry. While best efforts are made to match those to valid addresses when loading to the Crime Data Warehouse, there are still technical limitations to fixing all poorly formatted addresses.
• Addresses for incidents outside of SF - some cases are referred from outside SFPD districts, these will be marked as Out of SF in the Police District column and not have associated geographic information.

Privacy controls

Coordinates

All incident locations are shown at the intersection level only. Records are masked to intersection to minimize the risk of re-identification to an individual. Intersections used in the masking are associated with either 0 or greater than 11 premise addresses. A premise address is a specific place of work or residence.

Juvenile Data

Based on Government Code (GC) 6254 and California Welfare and Institutions Code § 827, identifying juvenile information will not be available in this dataset. Incidents with a resolution of “Cite or Arrest Juvenile” and/or “Exceptional Juvenile” have been removed from this dataset. In addition, the following INCODES have been removed from this dataset.

Field definitions

See definitions on dataset landing page here: https://data.sfgov.org/d/wg3w-h783