New Online Platform Makes Hays County Crime Data Accessible to Public

A Tyler Technologies system is keeping Hays County residents informed of local crime and arrest data, all on a single platform.

Citizen Connect, which is part of Tyler Technologies’ Public Safety Analytics package, collects data from the crime databases of multiple law enforcement agencies in the county, including arrests, charges related to arrests, time of arrests and locations.

“Citizen Connect is a platform that allows us to transparently share out pieces of information or data that we have on a local government level with consumers,” said Stephanie Robinson, director of the Hays County Combined Emergency Communications Center, in an interview with Industry Insider — Texas. “It is a platform where they can come engage with their local government and get information that ultimately allows them to make some type of executive decision, whether that be ‘Should I send my 19-year-old off to college here in Hays County? [or] Should I move to this community?’”

The first system of its kind in Texas, Citizen Connect users can access crime activity data from the Hays County Sheriff’s Office, San Marcos Police Department, Kyle Police Department, Buda Police Department and Texas State University Police Department.

Users can filter their search for data by area, law enforcement agency and by incident. They also have the option to receive updates on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

“I think that the biggest impact is that and it’s not necessarily for maybe officers in the field, right, but it is for the people in the office that are processing those open records requests,” said Robinson. “It really has cut back on how much [they] were being required to produce data when they can get it on their own, and the fantastic thing about that is people can subscribe. So ... I can put my address in and get a radius around where I work or live and automatically get that information sent to me.”

According to Robinson, Citizen Connect is averaging between 700 and 800 visitors a week and over 3,000 users visiting from unique IP addresses per month since its implementation in August 2023.

"[Citizen Connect] is offered throughout the country and we do have similar successes of people utilizing it," said Dana Rasmussen, content marketing manager for Tyler Technologies. "Hays County is just a bright, shining star that's using it right now and really showing how it can be advantageous to the community."