Ohio - Traffic Stop Data_1

To Whom It May Concern:

I am the managing editor of Peninsula Press, a multimedia news website based out of Stanford University in California. We are working on collecting data on traffic stops and searches made by state patrols across the country. (I previously contacted your agency regarding record layout information about what datapoints your state collects and was provided a data dictionary in Excel format.)

Pursuant to the Ohio Open Records Law, I hereby request the following records:

I am requesting the raw data of traffic stops made in your state and laid out in your record description for the last ten (10) years. The fields of data include:

DATE_STAMP
INCIDENT_PK
TYPE
UNIT
ADDRESS
LATITUDE
LONGITUDE
COUNTY_CODE
DISP_STRING
ORC_STRING
ASINC_STRING

These were all fields on the form provided by the state.

Additionally, if collected and not already included above, we’d like to request the incident date, incident time, violator race, violator sex, violator DOB, vehicle info (make/model/VIN), officer ID, officer race, what violation occurred and what type of enforcement took place.

The requested data will be analyzed, eventually be made available to the general public and be used for editorial purposes. This request is not being made for commercial purposes. We kindly ask the request be filled electronically. We can accept the data in many common formats, including as CSV, spreadsheet or other database formats. Data can be emailed to vram@stanford.edu or uploaded to this Dropbox folder: https://www.dropbox.com/request/rpck32SKxlUHEr5yR9hB

In the event data has to be sent physically on a CD or portable drive, please mail to Peninsula Press, Stanford Journalism Program, 450 Serra Mall, Building 120, Stanford, CA 94305.
In the event that fees cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I would request your response within ten (10) business days.

Sincerely,
Vignesh Ramachandran

Vignesh Ramachandran
Managing Editor, Peninsula Press
Stanford Journalism Program
email vram@stanford.edu
phone 650.723.0703
physical mail 450 Serra Mall, Building 120, Stanford, CA 94305

Thanks Lt. Cvetan. We look forward to the 5 years of data.

Hi Lt. Cvetan,

You can please mail to:

Peninsula Press at Stanford
C/O Vignesh Ramachandran
450 Serra Mall, Stanford University
Building 120
Stanford, CA 94305

Thank you,
Vignesh

Thank you.

Hi Lt. Cvetan,

Thank you for sending the CD with the data. I received it and was able to download the data.

As a follow up question, we’d like to find out: have you analyzed this data you collect and are there any studies or analysis you’ve had done around it you can point us to?

Thanks,
Vignesh

Vignesh Ramachandran
Managing Editor, Peninsula Press
Stanford Journalism Program
email vram@stanford.edu
phone 650.723.0703
physical mail 450 Serra Mall, Building 120, Stanford, CA 94305

Thanks Lt. Cvetan. Will be in touch with any future questions.