On Friday, state police officials lauded the announcement as a victory for the residents of the state.
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New Jersey State Police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes.
He's just a little skeptical of how accurate a portrayal it will be.
Preliminary crime data collected from municipalities will now be updated weekly by the state police's Uniform Crime Reporting Unit and displayed online for the public.
The problem, Guzzo said, is that Uniform Crime Reports published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation collect crime data based on national categories rather than by municipal or state laws. A car burglary in New Jersey, for instance, is prosecuted as such, but the Uniform Crime Report classifies it as a theft, he said.
"It's good and it's a way of collecting data, but it doesn't really capture a lot of incidents that municipalities deal with on a regular basis," Guzzo said.
But the fact that the reports will be updated more frequently is still a helpful feature for the public, Guzzo said.
State police stress that the data will be unverified and, therefore, subject to change or revision when the numbers are officially published in its annual "Crime in New Jersey" report each fall.
The information will initially be featured in PDF form, but members of the unit are in the process of developing an "interactive Web page format" that will strive to be more user-friendly, according to state police. Local police departments will not be expected to change how frequently they report the data, which is mostly done monthly.
State police officials lauded the announcement as a victory for New Jersey residents.
"For the first time, we are able to give the public a sense of the current crime picture in their area," state police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes said in a statement. "Even as preliminary data, this will be a great new tool for the public."
Sgt. Adam Grossman, of the state police's public information office, said that Friday's announcement was only the beginning of a process aimed at providing residents with data faster and more efficiently.
"This is a positive step towards getting this information out in a timely manner," he said.
Much like Guzzo, Phillipsburg police chief James Faulborn said that while there are positives and negatives to Uniform Crime Report data, updating the public with the freshest available information is still important.
"I think transparency is a good thing in government," Faulborn said. "It certainly would be helpful to the public for them to get that information as close to real time as you could."
Visit njsp.org/info/ucr_currentdata.html for the New Jersey State Police's weekly updates of municipal crime data.