 Well good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I'm very proud to announce today the commencement of the Queensland Police Service online crime statistics portal which has gone live today. The intent is to provide the community which with much more up-to-date information about where crime is being committed and being sold in their community. Certainly the initiative is in line with the government's open data initiatives and direction and we're very proud to be part of that government direction by providing greater access to the public for crime that's occurring anywhere in Queensland. So explain how it works. How do I go on there and work it? Well any member of the public can access the portal by simply going to our our Queensland Police web page and on that web page they simply click on the online statistics area and that will bring up the map of Queensland which and a range of filters so they can decide which crimes they'd like to search for and the area that they'd like to search in. So what crimes can we search for? In fact nearly every crime class is provided in a mappable environment so every crime class will come up on our maps other than two and that's domestic violence and sexual crime. While that information is provided in an aggregated way on a monthly basis for privacy reasons we haven't added it to the map but every other crime class is there. There is a lag of about a week between when a crime event occurs and when it will go live on our on our crime map and there are reasons for that in terms of quality control of the information but certainly with that weak lag people can look at their area at a neighbouring area at a whole city at the whole state in fact to look at what crime is being committed. Sexual offences I mean what would that entail and why have you included that? There are issues around privacy individual privacy particularly victims and so we've chosen to keep that in our normal monthly aggregated stats which will provide numbers in a divisional area but not in this specific area where it occurs. What level of detail can you get do you know at number 45 that was a break-in number 78 that was a cast on or is it not to that? The map will provide a general location but again for specific data to and address that won't be given but it certainly will give information about the crime and it will be in the general area of where the crimes occurs. And how are you updated being solved? How do we know it's going to be solved? That information is within the icon and so the crime will come up as a particular type and it will give a time and what have you when the crime occurs and it will give another piece of information if it's actually been solved. You could be embarrassing if crimes aren't solved and how many crimes there are in particular? No look this is just a basically live statistics that we produce to the community on a yearly basis but it is down to another level where we provide this information based on location very specific location something more than we've done in the past. Are we going to be able to use these figures to compare you know one suburb to another suburb? Absolutely. Certainly the crime mapping will go back about 13 years so not only can you make judgments about what's happened over time but you can also compare suburb to suburb area to postcode to postcode even. Certainly we understand that there is always a balance in providing this type of information but in line with the government's intent to provide the community with information so that they can make informed choices on a range of issues we see the crime mapping as being part of that initiative. Where are the worst spots? Look I'll leave that up to up to all of the community to have a look at but the reality is there'll be no surprises I don't think in relation to the type of information they can glean from this. As I said this information is provided down to divisional level normally and we've been doing that for many many years on a yearly basis in our annual statistical review process but what this will give people is up-to-date information. There are the benefits to the community of this information being there and that is that if someone was checking in their area and saw a particular crime come up on the on the map they may remember seeing something they may remember some incident that occurred and provide that information to the police to help us solve that particular crime so there are certainly benefits from this. Do you see the police building on this in the future and so if you have a certain area it might flash up these are the unsolved crimes kind of things that I need to hand on? Look who knows where technology is going to take us the way that technology is evolving so quickly but in the future it may be we may show hotspots be able to show current time hotspots with crime to help the community understand what's occurring in real time in their area but that's for the future. Should individual residents have any concerns about you know if they're concerned about their privacy about you know what's happened at their home for their neighbors being able to see what's on these maps? The individual map information will not be down to the detail of exactly where the crime occurred but it will be close by so certainly that information I mean by doing the mapping exercise we have to be able to put it somewhere it's no good having them all at the intersection of a road say you know 100 200 meters away the whole purpose of the crime map is to provide better information to the community so that the community can ultimately help us as well. So what is it a double benefit essentially keeping the locals more informed so that they may be able to help? Absolutely I mean this is not just about people making informed decisions about what's occurring in their neighborhood it certainly is about helping them to understand what's going on and potentially being able for them to recognize that something's occurred and provide information back to the police and crime stoppers obviously is a way of doing that. Do other states have this? Look this is a worldwide trend and not only other states have it in Australia but around the world there are examples of this the I would suggest though that the the ability for us to put up stats that are only a week old is probably best practice in Australia at the moment for crime stats. So why is it taking so long to launch something like this? Oh look technology is a wonderful thing there's a lot of planning and effort goes into providing this type of service but in line with government policy certainly this is something that we've been working on for a while. Are we one of the last states to take this on board? No not at all there are some states that have it some areas that have it I think that the ACT was the last one to go live about a year ago and here we are today. How effective do you talk to the other states about how effective it has been? I certainly as I said this is not this is not just about law enforcement this is about providing data to the to the community so that they can make informed decisions on a range of a range of decisions that they they want to make about where where do they want to live those sorts of issues. I'm sure that people will look at this when they're making decisions at lifestyle choices. Now that you've set it up is it going to take much resources to keep it updated or is it all automated? It's basically automated but obviously there's a quality control mechanism that takes some manual work as well but basically it's automated. So do you expect you know residents might from all over the state might start grouping to get on saying we've had X number of breakings in our suburb and our streets what are you doing about? Look I hope they do in fact that's one of the benefits of the community being able to make informed decision and some of the informed decisions about the quality of the policing services we provide and I hope that that will exactly be part of the discussion that will happen at the local level.