Kudos to the Village of Buffalo Grove for introducing a Police Transparency section to their website, which includes a …
Weekly Police Blotter
Incident Map, and
Current Crime Trends
Kudos also to the Buffalo Grove Police Department for recognizing the media has a recognized potential user of the new online service provided.
The new section for incident news-related information is reached via a short, user-friendly web address — vbg.org/pdtransparency
According to the Village of Buffalo Grove, the new online section represents a continued effort to promote transparency and enhance communication with the community. The Buffalo Grove Police Department announced the launch of a new Police Transparency section on the village website on Tuesday, February 25, 2025. This addition is available at vbg.org/pdtransparency provides the public and media with easy access to important data about police operations and calls for service (incidents).
The Buffalo Grove Police Department transparency page links to a weekly police blotter, ensuring that the public and media can stay informed on recent police incidents, arrests, and more. There is a list of weeks by month, that link to pdf files for each month.
The police transparency page also features a dynamic Incident Map powered by ArcGIS, allowing residents to view selected calls for service from January 1, 2025 onward. The map offers an up-to-date, visual representation of activity across Buffalo Grove, according to the Village of Buffalo Grove Police Department. One interesting note, it was easy to find “Traffic And Related Activity Crash Settled At Scene” but there didn’t seem to be a selection for personal injury crashes or more serious crashes.
The police transparency page also provides a link to a section titled “Current Crimes & Trends” which includes information on specific criminal trends such as Cryptocurrency Scams, Residential Burglaries with general details, such as methods being used by criminals, and items that are being target for theft. Currently (early March 2025) the targeted items are those that are readily accessible, not a particular item. With a quick look, an embedded static crime map indicates where the hot spots are (yellow surrounded by red). At the date of publishing this CARDINAL NEWS article, there is a hot spot noticed in a neighborhood of single-family homes just northwest of Willow Stream Park, and another neighborhood of townhomes and single-family homes just east-northeast of the intersection of Lake Cook Road and Weiland Road.
“By incorporating the latest technology into our operations, we aim to make information more accessible and foster trust with the community. This new initiative reflects our commitment to transparency and our ongoing efforts to ensure that citizens and the media are informed and engaged with the work we do.”
— Police Chief Brian Budds
The police transparency page is part of the Buffalo Grove Police Department’s broader efforts to provide open access to a variety of valuable resources. The page also features other easy access to other information already available like current crime trends and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) portal, according to the Village of Buffalo Grove.
Through these efforts, the Buffalo Grove Police Department remains dedicated to building strong, transparent relationships with the community, utilizing the latest technological advancements to support effective policing and open communication.
— Village of Buffalo Grove Police Department
The introduction of this online information service puts the Village of Buffalo Grove number one in transparency regarding incidents among police departments that are part of the 9-1-1 center Northwest Central Dispatch System (NWCDS). The member police departments of NWCDS are Arlington Heights, Barrington, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, Inverness, Mount Prospect, Palatine, Prospect Heights, Rolling Meadows, Schaumburg, Streamwood and Wheeling.
For example comparison, the Schaumburg Police Department has no crime incident map and no blotter. There is only an index to press releases, and the press release list is not up to date, or is missing press releases.
Arlington Heights Police Department does not have a crime incident map, after maps were discontinued several years ago. The Arlington Heights Police Department uses Citizen Observer for a list of crime incidents, but details of each incident are incomplete or minimized to the point of almost useless information. Also, some important incidents are missing. Arlington Heights crime incident information is not as bad as Schaumburg, but pales in comparison to information available from the Buffalo Grove Police Department, and pales in comparison to details available online from at least two police departments outside the immediate area — the Des Plaines Police Department and the Northbrook Police Department.
If any of these police features (blotter and crime map) for Arlington Heights or Schaumburg are available online, there are no user friendly links to the features from the police sections of the official websites for these two municipalities.
^^ MOBILE? USE VOICE MIC ^^
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