Chasing Info About Pedestrian Collisions
It’s a lot harder to advocate for pedestrian safety when City Hall refuses to acknowledge that there’s any problem and there’s insufficient data because London Police Services doesn’t release it. So here’s what I’ve been up to …
First, I put in a request to receive media releases from LPS. At first, that request was refused. So I contacted the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.
In his 2008/12//12 response, Mr. Bob Spence (IPC Communications Co-ordinator) disclosed that “Police services are among the government organizations that fall under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.” He also attached “an order this office issued a number of years ago, P-1099 that refers to receiving a series of news releases.”
Armed with that decision, I requested that LPS reverse it’s previous decision, and they agreed.
In a same-day response to my 2008/12/30 inquiry, I was told that LPS only has one full-time media officer. Although there are “some officers who are trained to fill in the position” it appears that they are usually out on streets duty and are simply available to answer telephone inquiries from the media.
On 2009/01/11 the London Free Press published an article about a pedestrian who was struck by a vehicle on Florence Street. Which was somewhat of a surprise to me since I hadn’t received a police release about the incident. This is the reply that I got to my inquiry:
We don’t put out releases about all traffic collisions, in this case we had the road closed for a period of time so I believe that the media LFP and radio stations must had called in wondering about details, I was not working this weekend. The male pedestrian is in critical condition. I did not put a release about it but answering questions from media today about it if anyone has any.
My next-day follow-up inquiry:
Can you provide me with the criteria which is used in determining whether to issue a release or not? I have to tell you that I’m somewhat surprised (and concerned) that all vehicle-pedestrian incidents would not automatically be identified.
How many of 2008’s +230 vehicle-pedestrian incidents generated a media release?
And the same-day reply:
I have just liased with traffic dept and will be doing up a formal release, as for the number of media releases for traffic collisions involving pedestrians we don’t keep a tally. I have to liase with traffic first before putting out formal releases that’s my criteria.
In other words, sometimes they put out a release and sometimes they simply don’t bother. Those members of the media who happen to know about an incident some other way and who make an inquiry may get those questions answered, and maybe the public will hear about it and maybe they won’t. Other members of the media who don’t know about the incident because they didn’t receive a police release don’t get the opportunity to inform the public.
Perhaps that helps to explain why I read about so few of last year’s 233 incidents in the London Free Press. What’s worse is that the information isn’t available on the LPS website (I’m guessing because it never gets generated by the traffic division and/or the media office).
Should every individual member of the public who wants this information have to pursue a Freedom Of Information request? And what good does it do even if they do?
I set out to answer that question for myself.
On 2009/01//12 I visited LPS with a written FOI request for the release of all information pertinent to vehicle/pedestrian collisions in all of London during the whole of 2008. I did not otherwise limit the request. In fact, after it was suggested to me that my request might be very expensive to produce and that I might want to limit it, I made it perfectly clear that I wanted as much information about each incident as possible.
On 2009/02/12 I received a telephone call from a LPS “FOI Analyst.” It was explained that a response to my request which did not include Provincial Offence numbers could be made available to me for a total of $7 (my previous $5 filing fee plus 5 x $0.20/page). On the other hand, if I insisted on the P.O. numbers as well, a special software program would have to be coded and the cost might be about $180!
As you can imagine, I was not at all happy to learn that it would cost so much to obtain information that I feel ought to be available to every citizen through the media without charge.
Because of the prohibitive cost, I requested that a response be generated excluding the POIs and that I would decide how to proceed after receiving/examining it.
I attended at LPS later that same day and received the report after providing identification. Subsequent examination revealed that it contained the barest detail, as you can see for yourself.
Here’s some of what’s not included:
- date of incident?
- what injuries? who was injured?
- what HTA and CC offences and who was charged?
- where multiple locations exist by the same name, which one?
* eg. fanshawe park road at north centre
* eg. ernest at jalna
It will cost $25 just to file an appeal with the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Small change for some people, but lots of reason not to proceed for somebody on a limited disability income. But this is something that I feel strongly about and ought to be of significant public interest, so I’ll ante up.
Click HERE to view the mashup I did using Google Maps + the stats that were released to me.
Some previous posts re this subject:
© Fowler Media
Greg.
First off it seems as if too much discretion is utilized when the LPS makes decisions on what is to be made a release and what isn’t. It seems that there should be some set criteria, almost a “blanket” policy which demands that no matter how large or small an incident is that it be released. Perhaps this is something that will come with time, although it should already be in place.
As for your inquiry and mapping of data I really feed bad about this. I have access to this type of data (with detailed information for I believe a 10 year period) from multiple sources (CoL, LPS, LHSC) but because of the nature of my work, agreements signed the various approvals for ethics that have been gone through I am unable to share the data with anyone outside of my work place.
With that said, as soon as something is published with this data, or something is made available to the public I will be sure to alert you to it Greg.
I agree with Kevin’s first paragraph. How can any assessment of pedestrian safety be made without the data?
You’ve had to be very tenacious to get this far Greg.
Kev: I didn’t know that you routinely get to see this kind of data, but I do understand the constraint placed upon you by non-disclosure agreements and I’ve got no problem if you feel that you can’t discuss that.
Kev/Jesse: I’m glad to hear other people expressing the same perspective as what I’ve been operating under, ie that it’s in the public interest that this data be made fully available and in a timely fashion. Now, I’m not prepared at this point to accuse LPS of malfeasance, but the fact is that the suppression of such data does impact upon the ability of persons such as myself from being able to fully and equitably engage in the democratic process. How can I press my case (that I’ve been making for years) that pedestrians in this city get too little respect/protection from the police and from City Hall? With it, I’m much more capable of making the case that pedestrians are at risk. Yes, and I’ll be the first to admit it, there are lots of examples of poor pedestrian behaviour around town. But these kinds of numbers support my contention that there’s an equal problem with driver behaviour, and that there’s lots of law-abiding pedestrians who are unnecessarily and unfairly in danger simply because those who could do something about it choose not to. In my opinion, the LPS traffic division ought to automatically furnish the media officer with all the information that can be legally released every time that one of these incidents occurs, and as full a description as possible ought to then go out as a media release. More than that, the media release ought to be archived on the LPS website and accessible by any member of the public who chooses to do so.
Jesse: Thank you! That’s a much nicer way of telling me what I often hear!
[...] received a tip at about 08:30 p.m. last night (2009/04/17) that another vehicle/pedestrian incident might have occurred earlier in the evening at Oxford/Talbot. London Police have now [...]