Tommy Schnoor has been a data engineer for the last 20 years, working in backend development in the private sector. With that industry experience, Schnoor was not always confident in frontend development—meaning what users see and interact with on a website. That is, until artificial intelligen ce made it possible for him to create SafeSD.org, a crime data dashboard that pulls public information from the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) and the city of San Diego. The website has no ads and is free for the public to use. Snchoor said this is his passion project. “I did it for fun because I felt like, well I was using Citizen and I didn’t want to pay for the app,” said Schnoor. “And once I got that idea, I started talking to AI and I got excited and then I started finding and digging into the data sets that were available, and there’s still more,” added Schnoor. The website categorizes different types of crime across neighborhoods in San Diego. It displays the type of crime—such as property or violent crime—and assigns a grade based on the severity of crime compared to other neighborhoods. Schnoor admits that data isn’t always perfect, and neither is he. Numbers, he adds, don’t always paint the whole picture. However, the dashboard can give users a pretty good idea of what’s going on in their neighborhood, whether in real time or in overall crime statistics. SafeSD.org “This is just one person and a machine,” said Schnoor. Schnoor said he is looking for feedback on the dashboard from fellow data enthusiasts to continue improving it. Since the dashboard launched on February 25, it has averaged about 3,000 users per day. He has since updated the website to include information on water quality, infrastructure projects, and individual revenue from specific parking meters across the city. For now, the dashboard only works within the city of San Diego because that’s where the data is pulled from. Schnoor’s eventual goal is to expand the dashboard to include information from across San Diego County. However, he said that expansion is still a long way off. NBC 7 reached out to SDPD for comment on the crime dashboard on February 25 but has not heard back. ...read more read less