Seattle is a hotbed of local news innovation and a big part of it is the technology infrastructure the city's leaders have put in place. Recently, City Hall announced another move forward in technological transparency as the Seattle Police Department began putting many of its incident reports online  where any citizen can access, understand and report on what is happening on the streets around them.

We're proud to announce an amazing new update to our popular SeattleCrime iPhone app  that will make this useful new dataset available to you where you roam in the city. The latest version of the SeattleCrime app now features a new SPD tab that will show you the latest SPD reports for your area. You can read the full text of the report on your phone and add comments to be part of a community conversation about the realities of crime in Seattle.

The SPD reports are now paired with our multiple feeds of data, real-time reports from Seattle Fire and the new community-driven YouReport system to create a one-of-a-kind mobile information source. You can also access this information via the Web at http://seattlecrime.com/911/map

Don't have the app on your phone yet? Here's what Lost Remote said about SeattleCrime:

The result is a slick user interface and timely data. (There were apparently two assaults within blocks of my office on Capitol Hill as I’m writing this. Maybe I’ll stay in for lunch today.) The crime reports on the app and the site come from the Seattle Fire Department’s 911 log (which automatically update), police reports, Spangenthal-Lee’s own reporting, and info from local blogs. Those reports now include contributions from users as the iPhone app has the ability to send reports to the site.

Download it here. Android users? We're working on your version, too. Plus, watch for our neighborhood news versions coming very, very soon!