This data ceased updating with the transition to a new records management system on 11/14/2023. Access to the updated data set has been added as of April 11, 2025 here: Crime Data Guide.

Abstract

The Police Blotter Archive contains crime incident data for the City of Pittsburgh. This dataset consists of two data tables: (i) historical (FY2005 through 2015) and (ii) current (FY2061-2023). For both tables, x- and y-geocodes representing the incident location are provided for each incident report.

These open government data are available online (https://data.wprdc.org/dataset/uniform-crime-reporting-data) under a Creative Commons License that allows for re-distribution and reuse with proper attribution to the creator (City of Pittsburgh). They have been uploaded here for use within the Redivis platform.

The Allegheny County 911 center answers and dispatches 911 calls for 111 out of 130 municipalities in Allegheny County. Agencies are dispatched via a computer aided dispatch (CAD) system. This dataset contains dispatched EMS and Fire events from the CAD and includes details about the nature of the emergency.

To protect the privacy of callers and prevent sensitive health or other identifying information being revealed, the following steps were taken:

• Aggregated event location to census block groups.
• Aggregated call date/time to quarter and year.
• Shortened call types to remove potentially identifying information.
• Flagged certain call types as containing sensitive health information, such as mental health issues, overdose, etc.
• Checked frequency of calls with sensitive health information:
  • If the number of calls (in a particular category related to sensitive health information) for a certain quarter/year and census block group was greater than or equal to 5, the call description was included.
  • If less than 5, the call description was redacted.

Events requiring EMS and Fire services will appear in both datasets with a different Call ID. Events requiring two agencies of the same service (e.g. two or more different fire companies responded to a major fire) will only list the primary responder.

The call descriptions are based on information provided by the caller. The calls are not later updated with a disposition or correction if the original description was inaccurate. For example, if EMS is dispatched to the scene of a stroke, but the person actually had a heart attack, that record would not be updated later with the correct description.

A small subset of the CAD data had no call type recorded. These records are preserved with a "null" in the Description_Short field. Redacted call types are listed as "Removed".

The 19 municipalities that dispatch their own EMS, Fire, and/or Police services are called "ringdown municipalities". These are subject to change. The list can be found in the Ringdown Municipalities 2019 resource.

Due to the size of these tables, you may experience 504 Gateway Timeout errors when trying to download the first two resources below. Use the following links instead.

To download the 911 EMS Dispatches table, click on this link: https://tools.wprdc.org/downstream/ff33ca18-2e0c-4cb5-bdcd-60a5dc3c0418

To download the 911 Fire Dispatches table, click on this link: https://tools.wprdc.org/downstream/b6340d98-69a0-4965-a9b4-3480cea1182b

Support for Health Equity datasets and tools provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) through their Health Equity Initiative.