Crime data API

Crime incidents for 41 US and Canadian cities in a single, uniform payload — pick a city code, pick a date range, page through the results — plus a crime score for any address or coordinate and 311 service requests for the 27 cities that publish them. Every city returns the same field names with the same meanings, so you integrate once.

Overview

Authentication

Send your key in a header. Both forms are accepted:

# preferred
Authorization: Bearer sck_xxxxxxxxxxxx_yyyyyyyy…

# equivalent
X-API-Key: sck_xxxxxxxxxxxx_yyyyyyyy…

• A key looks like sck_<key_id>_<secret>. The key_id is public and identifies the key in your dashboard and in our audit log; the secret half is shown once, at creation, and we store only a hash of it. We cannot recover it for you — if it is lost, revoke and create a new one.
• Keys belong to your organization, not to an individual, so they survive staff changes and stay revocable by any org owner or admin.
• Do not use this API from browser JavaScript. We deliberately send no CORS headers: any key embedded in a web page is a public key. Call it from your backend.
• Revocation is immediate — it is checked on every request, not cached.

Quick start

curl -s "https://www.seecrime.com/api/v1/incidents?city=CHI&start=2026-07-01&end=2026-07-31&limit=5" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SEECRIME_API_KEY"

Response:

{
  "api_version": "v1",
  "meta": {
    "city_key": "CHI",
    "city_name": "Chicago",
    "city_country": "US",
    "start": "2026-07-01",
    "end": "2026-07-31",
    "date_basis": "occurred",
    "timezone": "America/Chicago",
    "limit": 5,
    "returned": 5,
    "has_more": true,
    "next_cursor": "eyJkIjoiMjAyNi0wNy0zMVQxOTowMDowMCIsImkiOiIxMzMzNzExNiJ9",
    "multiple_records_per_incident": false,
    "data_earliest": "2021-01-01",
    "data_latest": "2026-07-30"
  },
  "incidents": [
    {
      "city_key": "CHI",
      "city_name": "Chicago",
      "city_state": "IL",
      "city_timezone": "America/Chicago",
      "record_id": "CHI-13337116",
      "incident_code": "JH123456",
      "incident_date": "2026-07-12T21:00:00",
      "incident_date_basis": "occurred",
      "incident_time_known": true,
      "incident_offense": "Motor Vehicle Theft",
      "incident_offense_code": "240",
      "incident_offense_description": "Motor Vehicle Theft",
      "incident_offense_detail_description": "Motor Vehicle Theft at 050XX N LAKE SHORE DR SB",
      "incident_offense_crime_against": "Property",
      "incident_offense_action": null,
      "incident_offense_severity": 5,
      "incident_offense_is_violent": false,
      "incident_source_name": "Chicago_Police_Department",
      "incident_source_original_type": "MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE",
      "incident_source_original_code": "0910",
      "incident_latitude": 41.975178,
      "incident_longitude": -87.649961,
      "incident_address": "050XX N LAKE SHORE DR SB",
      "incident_arrest": false,
      "incident_domestic": false,
      "incident_source_fields": {
        "description": "AUTOMOBILE",
        "location_description": "STREET",
        "beat": "2033",
        "district": "020",
        "ward": "48",
        "community_area": "3"
      }
    }
  ]
}

GET /incidents

One page of incidents for one city. city is the only required parameter.

Filters combine with AND, and offense, crime_against and violent intersect with each other. A combination with no possible matches returns an empty incidents array — not an error.

GET /risk-score

A crime score for a single point — pass coordinates, or a US street address and we geocode it. Same scorer that powers the risk card in the app, so the two never disagree.

Address lookup is US-only. The geocoder behind address= covers US street addresses; for a covered city outside the US, pass lat and lon directly — the scorer itself works anywhere we hold data. An address we cannot locate returns 422 address_not_found, which is deliberately distinct from 503 geocoder_unavailable.

Supply either coordinates or an address. The search radius is a fixed ¼ mile (0.4 km) and is not configurable — two addresses are only comparable when the circle is the same size.

curl -s "https://www.seecrime.com/api/v1/risk-score?address=233+S+Wacker+Dr,+Chicago,+IL" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SEECRIME_API_KEY"

{
  "api_version": "v1",
  "query": {
    "lat": 41.878876, "lon": -87.635915,
    "address": "233 S Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL",
    "matched_address": "233 S WACKER DR, CHICAGO, IL, 60606",
    "geocoder": "census",
    "radius_km": 0.4
  },
  "city_key": "CHI", "city_name": "Chicago", "city_state": "IL",
  "scored": true,
  "score": 54, "grade": "C", "label": "Moderate Risk",
  "incidents": {
    "radius_km": 0.4, "total": 128, "violent": 31, "property": 74,
    "last_30_days": 39, "last_90_days": 128,
    "top_offenses": [{"offense": "Larceny/Theft", "count": 58}]
  },
  "measures": {
    "vs_city_average_pct": 18.4, "trend": "stable",
    "night_share_pct": 34, "night_share_coverage": 1.0, "has_night_data": true,
    "arrest_rate_pct": 11, "has_arrest_data": true,
    "has_foot_traffic_data": true
  },
  "coverage": {
    "limitation": null, "area_coverage_pct": 1.0,
    "nearby_incidents": 4412, "nearby_radius_km": 5.0,
    "city_has_recent_data": true, "outside_data_footprint": false
  }
}

Read scored before you read score

Response fields

coverage.limitation

One field to branch on. null means score it as read.

Zero incidents does not by itself mean no coverage. A genuinely quiet residential block also returns zero, so we additionally count what exists within nearby_radius_km: something nearby and nothing in the circle means quiet, and it still gets a grade. Nothing nearby either means the data does not reach the address, and that is the case we refuse to grade.

Errors specific to this endpoint

Address lookups add roughly 0.2–2 s on a first request and are cached afterwards. If you are scoring the same locations repeatedly, geocode once on your side and pass lat/lon.

GET /service-requests

311 service requests — potholes, graffiti, illegal dumping, missed collections — for the 27 of 41 cities that publish them. Same city codes, same pagination, same date semantics as /incidents.

curl -s "https://www.seecrime.com/api/v1/service-requests?city=CHI&type=Pothole+in+Street&limit=2" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SEECRIME_API_KEY"

{
  "meta": {
    "city_key": "CHI", "start": "2026-07-11", "end": "2026-08-10",
    "limit": 2, "returned": 2, "has_more": true, "next_cursor": "eyJk…",
    "request_type_vocabulary": "city_specific",
    "publishes_closed_date": true,
    "publishes_status": true
  },
  "service_requests": [
    {
      "city_key": "CHI", "city_name": "Chicago", "city_state": "IL",
      "city_timezone": "America/Chicago",
      "record_id": "CHI-SR26-01234567",
      "request_code": "SR26-01234567",
      "request_type": "Pothole in Street",
      "request_subtype": "PHF",
      "request_status": "Completed",
      "request_is_open": false,
      "request_opened_date": "2026-07-28T08:14:00",
      "request_opened_time_known": true,
      "request_closed_date": "2026-08-04T15:02:00",
      "request_channel": "Phone Call",
      "request_latitude": 41.902117, "request_longitude": -87.663443,
      "request_address": "1600 N WESTERN AVE",
      "request_source_fields": {
        "zip_code": "60647", "ward": "1", "community_area": "24",
        "community_area_name": "WEST TOWN", "police_district": "014"
      }
    }
  ]
}

request_is_open is tri-state

5 of the 27 cities publish no close date at all. For those, request_is_open is null — not true, because "no close date recorded" and "still open" are different claims and we only know the first. meta.publishes_closed_date tells you which case you are in, and open_only returns 400 unsupported_filter rather than silently returning everything.

Field notes

Asking for a city we cover for crime but that publishes no 311 returns 404 no_311_coverage — deliberately different from unknown_city, which means the code itself was wrong.

GET /service-request-types

Every distinct request_type for one city, with counts, most common first. This is how the type filter becomes usable — call it once per city and cache it.

curl -s "https://www.seecrime.com/api/v1/service-request-types?city=CHI" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SEECRIME_API_KEY"

{
  "api_version": "v1",
  "city_key": "CHI", "city_name": "Chicago",
  "count": 96,
  "truncated_at": null,
  "request_types": [
    { "request_type": "Pothole in Street", "count": 184203 },
    { "request_type": "Graffiti Removal",  "count": 151874 }
  ]
}

Capped at 500 types; truncated_at is null unless a city exceeded it, in which case it holds the cap. Asking for a city we cover for crime but that publishes no 311 returns 404 no_311_coverage, the same as /service-requests — a code that is not recognised at all is 400 unknown_city.

GET /cities

Every covered city with its code, timezone, publishing agency, available date range, and per-city capabilities. Call this at startup and cache it — it is how a newly added city reaches your integration without a code change on your side. No parameters.

curl -s "https://www.seecrime.com/api/v1/cities" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SEECRIME_API_KEY"

{
  "api_version": "v1",
  "count": 41,
  "cities": [
    {
      "city_key": "CHI",
      "city_name": "Chicago",
      "city_state": "IL",
      "city_country": "US",
      "city_timezone": "America/Chicago",
      "source_name": "Chicago_Police_Department",
      "date_basis": "occurred",
      "data_earliest": "2021-01-01",
      "data_latest": "2026-07-30",
      "multiple_records_per_incident": false,
      "supports": {
        "date_filter": true,
        "offense_filter": true,
        "spatial_filter": true,
        "arrest_field": true,
        "domestic_field": true
      },
      "has_311_data": true
    }
  ]
}

GET /offenses

The complete offense vocabulary — every value incident_offense can take, with its NIBRS code, group, severity weight and violent flag. Static apart from taxonomy releases, and the same 25 values rendered in the catalog below. No parameters.

curl -s "https://www.seecrime.com/api/v1/offenses" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SEECRIME_API_KEY"

{
  "api_version": "v1",
  "count": 25,
  "offenses": [
    {
      "offense": "Robbery",
      "offense_code": "120",
      "crime_against": "Property",
      "severity": 8,
      "is_violent": true,
      "is_crime": true
    },
    {
      "offense": "Non-Crime",
      "offense_code": null,
      "crime_against": "Other",
      "severity": 0,
      "is_violent": false,
      "is_crime": false
    }
  ]
}

Incident fields

Everything at the top level has the same meaning in every city. Anything whose meaning varies by agency is quarantined inside incident_source_fields.

City codes

41 cities27 also publish 311

“Rows per incident: many” means the agency files one record per offense, so several rows can share an incident_code. Count record_id for offenses; group by incident_code for incidents.

“311: yes” means /service-requests and /service-request-types work for that code. The same fact is on every /cities entry as has_311_data — read it from there rather than copying this column.

Offense catalog

Pagination

Cursor-based, newest first. Follow meta.next_cursor until meta.has_more is false:

cursor = None
while True:
    q = {"city": "CHI", "start": "2026-01-01", "end": "2026-06-30", "limit": 1000}
    if cursor: q["cursor"] = cursor
    r = requests.get(BASE + "/incidents", params=q, headers=H, timeout=30).json()
    yield from r["incidents"]
    if not r["meta"]["has_more"]:
        break
    cursor = r["meta"]["next_cursor"]

• Page 10,000 costs the same as page 1. There is no offset and no page number; the cursor is a keyset position, so we never re-scan what you have already read. That is also why there is no maximum date range — walk a decade if you need it.
• Treat the cursor as opaque. Its contents are an implementation detail and may change within v1.
• We do not return a total count. Counting exactly would mean a full scan per request; has_more answers the question that actually drives a loop.
• Cursors are stable against a fixed dataset. Ingest runs once a day, so a very long paging run that straddles it may see a row shift; restart the window if you need a perfectly consistent snapshot. See how current the data is.

Caching

• Every response carries an ETag. Send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged window answers 304 Not Modified with no body — the cheapest way to poll.
• Cache-Control: private, max-age=60 on /incidents and /service-requests; 3600 on /cities; 86400 on /offenses. The remaining endpoints set their own — read the header rather than assuming one of these.
• private on every response, always: it is served against your credential, so it must never land in a shared cache.

How current the data is

Our ingest sweep starts at 09:00 UTC and works through the cities one at a time. That is a start time, not an instant: the sweep is bounded by a wall-clock budget and rotates where it left off, so a large city can land several hours later, or roll over to the following day's run. Polling more often than hourly will not surface anything new.

Rate limits

Three limits apply to every request, on different axes. You need to know about all three, because the one that stops you is not always the one you sized for.

The per-key limit runs in a fixed 60-second window, and every response tells you where you stand against it:

X-RateLimit-Limit: 120
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 118
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1786000260   # unix seconds

Exceeding it returns 429 rate_limit_exceeded with Retry-After. Honour it — retry with exponential backoff rather than a tight loop.

Two consequences of the per-IP limit

• Keys behind one egress address share it. If several of your services call us through the same NAT gateway or egress IP, their requests count together against 600/minute regardless of how many separate keys they hold. Distinct keys give you distinct per-key budgets and separate audit trails; they do not give you distinct IP budgets.
• Raising one key above 600/minute achieves nothing on its own. The per-IP cap is checked first, so a key allowed more than 600/minute will still be refused at 600 from a single address. If you need to go beyond it, tell us what the traffic shape is — the answer is usually spreading the load across sources rather than one very large key.

Errors

Every error is JSON with a stable error code and a human message. Branch on the code, not the message.

{ "error": "unknown_city", "message": "The \"city\" parameter is required and must be a city code. See GET /api/v1/cities for the current list." }

Data caveats

These are properties of the source data, not of the API. They are documented because getting them wrong produces analysis that looks fine and is wrong.

1. Timestamps are local, with no offset. Agencies publish local civil time. We do not stamp a Z on it — that would be wrong by five to eight hours on every row. Localise using city_timezone. 3 cities (Mesa, Phoenix, Tucson) do not observe DST — their IANA zone says so, which is why you should localise from city_timezone rather than from a UTC offset you worked out once.
2. occurred vs reported is not cosmetic. 15 of 41 cities key their feed on when the report was filed. Comparing those to occurred cities day-by-day will mis-date incidents.
3. Coverage windows differ per city. Always read data_earliest / data_latest from /cities instead of assuming a range. Some feeds also lag their source by days or weeks, and at least one is frozen upstream — an empty recent window is usually publication lag, not zero crime. See how current the data is.
4. Some agencies publish administrative records — warrant service, lost property, mental-health transports, found vehicles — in the same dataset as offenses. We classify these as Non-Crime so they are visible rather than silently counted; they exceed 30% of records in a handful of cities. Pass exclude_non_crime=true for crime-only analysis.
5. Some agencies file one row per offense, not one per incident. 21 of the 41 cities do, so several records legitimately share one incident_code — a single arrest with three charges is three records — and counting rows over-counts incidents. Two places tell you which cities: meta.multiple_records_per_incident on every response, and the Rows per incident column in the City codes table. Count record_id for offenses and DISTINCT incident_code for incidents. This is not a filter you can turn off, deliberately: both views are legitimate, and collapsing the rows server-side would throw away the individual charges — which for many consumers are the point.
6. null is not zero and not false. A null in incident_arrest means the agency publishes no disposition. Counting nulls as "no arrest" invents a clearance rate — and null is what you will get from all but 1 of the 41 cities. The same applies to incident_domestic and to incident_offense_action.
7. Coordinates are as published. Many agencies deliberately publish block-level or slightly offset points to protect victim privacy. Do not treat a coordinate as a street address, and be careful with very small radii.
8. Offense counts are not crime rates. Recording practices, classification and what each agency chooses to publish all differ. incident_offense and incident_offense_severity exist to make cross-city comparison possible; they do not make it automatic.
9. Canadian cities report under Canadian UCR, not FBI/NIBRS. Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto publish under the Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting survey — a different coding system from the FBI's. incident_offense and incident_offense_code are our canonical classification, derived the same way for every city, so they stay comparable across the border. But a Canadian city's incident_source_original_code (TOR) is a raw Canadian UCR code and is not comparable to a US city's raw code. Group and compare on incident_offense; never on raw incident_source_original_code across countries.