Chicago is setting out to become a national leader in making crime statistics available to the public.
Starting Wednesday, a database of millions of incidents back to 2001 will be posted online. Officials say it's intended to be a searchable, daily updated, raw data dump that can be used by people to evaluate their own neighborhoods, academics or tech types who want to create websites.
The database includes some 4.6 million incidents with the address, if there was an arrest, the police beat, city ward and case number.
Chicago's crime data release is beyond what many other major police departments do. Many have mapping tools that show incidents over a limited period of time and others have static reports that show an aggregated number.
The data release is part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's attempt to make city dealings more open.
