I'm not sure about the homicides, though I'd like to think we'd find out about such an incident long before checking the RAIDS maps.

Sexual assaults get tricky - it's in an effort to not dissuade victims from reporting the crime. I also redacted these calls to protect potential victims when we made our own crime maps for Malden Patch. Most of these alleged cases unfortunately involve people known to the victim, and are not random attack situations. I have been assured by the police department that, in the instance of such a sexual assault, that the media would be notified for the public's safety.

Thanks, Chris. I absolutely understand why the majority of sexual assaults would be redacted, but I was reacting to the last line in this article that noted that the PD does redact homicides from its public logs.

Frankly, the ambivalent response to citizen concerns over the shots fired that is clear in this article is disturbing. Police departments are required to follow the National Incident Management System and thus, personnel would have had to have taken the Incident Command System courses from FEMA EMI. In all of these, the common thread is communication. NIMS was developed to standardize terms and communication across all response fields, and all agencies, so that there was no question of what was being relayed during multi-jurisdictional responses...but communication with the affected community, no matter the level of the incident, is also a lynchpin to success. In ever after-actions report ever generated since the dawn of paperwork creating apes, the key *failure* has been communication - both within the responding agencies and with the affected community.

Further, there have been studies upon studies (again, the Paperwork Ape) that show that the longer officials take to respond to citizen concerns or to inform the citizenry of what is (or isn't!) going on, the more distrustful people become. So when something really bad does happen, the people don't respond because, well, why should they? Their officials don't communicate adequately or timely, so...

I love my police scanner!

Would this really have had to prompt a citywide Code Red though? At the very least, a timely statement should have been issued publicly (not 2 or 3 days after the fact) noting exactly what this article states. I didn't hear these shots, but if I did and I didn't see anything in the news the next day, I'd be more concerned, not less; and more inclined to wonder why the Police Chief never lets the people know what's going on. Not acknowledging something like this in a timely fashion is easily perceived as covering something up or denying it's occurrence or existence and that leads to deep mistrust of public officials.

It doesn't have to be a Code Red if the responders determine that there is no present or imminent danger, but it should be a first-thing-in-the-morning press release to inform the residents about *what* responders concluded so that the locals aren't left wondering (speculating, and then rumor-mongering) about what really happened.

I'm persistently baffled by why the authorities in Malden would prefer to allow the Rumor Mill to churn rather than just provide information in a timely fashion. Rumors are always worse for them than they are for the rest of us in the end.

I thought they might be able to. Thanks, Chris. ;)