Karisa King and I were cleaning our corner of the newsroom last week, and I rediscovered this gem of an e-mail written by an official for the Texas Department of Insurance.

The state agency oversees the amusement-ride industry. When a patron is seriously injured, the ride owner is supposed to report the injury to the department of insurance, and the information is typed into a database.

For a story I wrote about the safety of amusement rides, we obtained a copy of the injury database, and the Express-News posted the data online.

That disturbed at least one state official.

“Tedeso has put together a searchable database of injuries from our data,” department spokesman Jerry Hagins informed his colleagues in the July 2009 e-mail.

“Can he do this?????????” replied Richard Baker, a manager at the agency.

A question with nine question marks deserves an answer: Yes, we can do this. In fact, news organizations and blogs ought to do this.

Related: Telling stories with data: Police chases and drug smugglers on the Texas-Mexico border

Government agencies collect reams of data about important issues. When journalists find that data, analyze it, and share it with the public, we help readers make sense of a complicated world. That’s our mission. And that’s why news sites are publishing “data centers” with unique and useful information.

Want to learn the salary of the city manager of San Antonio? Check a public-salary database.

Curious what litterbugs have been dumping on roadways? Check the state’s “Dont Mess with Texas” database.

Wondering where it’s safe to drive in San Antonio during a downpour? Check a map of low-water crossings, which was created from a city database.

Can we post this data?

Yep.

Should we?

Absolutely.

The post Government official shocked — shocked! — when public data is posted online appeared first on John Tedesco.

Law enforcement agencies usually churn out paperwork for every situation known to man. I made some phone calls and learned that officers must fill out a pursuit-evaluation form after they chase someone. The reports have check boxes for different categories of information, such as whether someone was injured during the chase. When you see boxes like that on a report, chances are, some hapless soul at the government agency types that information into a database. It turned out SAPD has been compiling a database that tracks details of every chase by all its officers.

If you work for a news organization or a blog and stumble upon a previously unknown database filled with rich details about an important public policy issue, you’ve found a great story. Request a copy of the raw data and analyze it. You might be able to tell your audience something new about the world.

Related: Telling stories with data: Police chases and drug smugglers on the Texas-Mexico border

SAPD’s pursuit database formed the foundation for my story that ran Sunday. The numbers show that two out of five pursuits damaged cars or property. The number of chases and crashes peaked in 2008, but dropped in 2009 after SAPD emphasized vehicle safety to its officers:

Here’s a copy of the raw data for the years 2003-2009. To me the numbers highlight the difficult position officers are in during a police chase, but they managed to make progress last year.

Getting the data was important. But it didn’t tell the full story — it was missing narratives describing what happened during the chase. The narratives were written down in the hardcopy pursuit reports. So I requested copies of reports for a bunch of chases, including a pursuit that led to the most recent death of an innocent bystander in San Antonio, 85-year-old Edna Hurst:

Pursuit-evaluation report describing a police chase by the San Antonio Police Department by John Tedesco

I also asked for a copy of SAPD’s pursuit policy. It describes the situations in which officers are permitted to pursue suspects. The policy also mentioned that Blue Eagle, the police helicopter unit, is supposed to videotape pursuits if the helicopter is able to assist. So I asked for some videos and came across this incident involving a reckless driver of a pickup truck, which I thought was a good example showing the dynamics of how officers handle chases.

The chase database doesn’t show the location of where the pursuit begins. But it does have a case number for each chase. Using that number, Mike Howell of mySA.com linked the data to Crimebase, a gargantuan data file of offense reports we receive from SAPD. Mike made an interesting map showing where chases occurred in the city in 2009. Click on a chase, and it calls up details from the pursuit data, and a link to a Crimebase report with a brief narrative.

The point of all this work isn’t to make SAPD look bad. It’s to offer people relevant information about a life-or-death issue. I learned a lot working on this story. If we did our job right, so did our readers.

The post Does risk of police chases outweigh benefits of capturing suspects? appeared first on John Tedesco.

Somehow my unofficial beat during every election in San Antonio is to roam around and write about the problems and low-voter turnout that afflict our messy Democracy. While on “election snafu” patrol, I was relying on a list of voting sites put out by the Bexar County Elections Department. But the list of locations was in the dreaded pdf form — not a very useful way to see at a glance which sites were in the neighborhoods I was interested in.

It was all relatively painless. I ended up relying on this map quite a bit today as I drove around checking voting sites.

Related: How to research a property’s history using Bexar County’s free records search

A map like this is useful if you want to see the voting locations in your area. It also helps to show the sheer scale of Bexar County’s network of polling sites.

The post Mapping voting sites with ZeeMaps appeared first on John Tedesco.

Buy what exactly do people tell TxDOT when they report a litterer?

In her newspaper column today, Peggy Fikac mentioned an interesting database we obtained recently of all littering complaints reported to TxDOT last year. If TxDOT can find a matching address to a reported license plate, the agency sends a friendly warning letter and litter bag to the alleged offender.

There’s some interesting patterns in the data. For example, Texas is parched from a record drought, yet cigarette butts were the most frequent type of litter reported by the public. Many people noted the risk of wildfire.

“Don’t Be a Butt!” one commenter wrote. “Keep your cigarettes in the car ashtray and help prevent fires! Thanks!”

Related: Web tools and apps to track weather emergencies in Texas

Some people also caught public workers littering: “I was surprised that the person littering was a DPS officer,” one complainant alleged. “I was disappointed to see (an) officer of the law break the law. The officer should be setting a example for the citizens.”

At least two people spotted litterbugs in fuel-efficient Priuses: “You think you’re green with your Prius but littering hurts the world!”

There was a Biblical commenter who simply wrote: “Revelation 11:18.”

And I was impressed by the reporting skills of this commenter:

“Man was a brunette, heavily built caucasian in tan cargo and tank top, tennis shoes in his early 40s. Threw the following out of parked SUV then drove off: 1 mcDonald’s chicken nugget, 1 piece of toy, 1 kids drink plastic cover, 1 straw, 2 bottles of water – one Kroger, the other brand I don’t recall; a plastic or rubber yellow and grey toy shark, a cardboard case bottom (possibly from a case of bottled water; cheetos empty bag, 2 dirty napkins, McDonalds large french fries holder. I did not confront driver because I was in my car and he was much much much bigger than me.”

You can check out the entire database here.

The post Public litter data: Don’t Mess with Texas appeared first on John Tedesco.

Everybody wants lower property taxes. But those with the least ability to pay rarely protest their appraised values, while owners of upscale homes are far more inclined to fight their bills.

The more costly your home, the more likely you are to protest, according to a San Antonio Express-News analysis of data from Bexar Appraisal District. …

Related: Transform a dull spreadsheet into a compelling, interactive map for readers

The story examines specific examples, and you can also search the data yourself.

The post Search a Bexar County database to learn who’s disputing their property appraisals appeared first on John Tedesco.

Ten years ago (wow, I’m getting old) I wrote a series of stories about the safety record of San Antonio’s major theme parks — Six Flags Fiesta Texas, SeaWorld San Antonio, and Splashtown. I learned state officials keep a little-known database that tracks amusement-ride injuries in Texas.

The database isn’t perfect. The injuries are self-reported by parks, and there’s missing cases of devastating, bone-breaking injuries, as my story published today points out. And the injury reports are written by ride owners, so it’s their version of events.

Related: Telling stories with data: Police chases and drug smugglers on the Texas-Mexico border

Despite the limitations, the injury data can be an interesting starting point for someone who’s wondering, just how safe is my local theme park or carnival?

Over the years, B.J. Morris, the friendly amusement-ride administrator at the Texas Department of Insurance, has e-mailed me updates to the data. Meanwhile, the data geeks at the Express-News have been doing a good job posting public data online for readers to slice and dice. Last year, we posted a salary database of city employees and it was wildly popular. It got me to thinking, maybe I need to stop hoarding that ride injury database on my computer’s hard drive and put that puppy in the public realm.

Here’s the result: A database of amusement ride injuries that’s available to everyone. For the first time, you can go online and look up injuries by ride owner and injury type. Many reports describe minor bumps and scrapes.

But one thing that struck me was the sheer variety of painful ways people get hurt at theme parks and carnivals. One report describes a 10-year-old girl who got her finger caught in a gate at Six Flags Over Texas.

Her fingertip was amputated.

You can look up these records yourself and see what exactly goes wrong at your favorite theme park. Just keep in mind you might not be getting the whole story.

The post Theme park injuries go unreported in Texas appeared first on John Tedesco.

A fire that engulfed the San Pedro Apartments on Tuesday was probably caused by an overloaded electrical outlet. But tenants complained the old building wasn’t well maintained, which raised questions about any past Code Compliance violations issued by city inspectors.

San Antonio’s Code Compliance Department has a Web site where you can plug in the address of a property and check its track record. It will show you the date of the violation, the type of violation, a case number, and whether the case is still open. At the apartment building, which is located at 502 San Pedro Avenue, there weren’t many violations.

Related: Contact John Tedesco, investigative reporter in Houston, Texas

The site only produces bare-bones information about each case, so if you want to know more details about a violation you have to contact the city. But it might be a good first step for people who, for example, want to know if a vacant property in their neighborhood is unsafe. You can check the address and see if it has a history of violations. That’s good information to have if you complain about the property to your city council member — it helps you make your case that there’s a problem.

The post Is your apartment building safe? How to check Code Enforcement Records appeared first on John Tedesco.