This blockchain project wants to bring more transparency to police data

VX Technologies believes that keeping records on blockchain can provide transparency and accountability for municipal government.

It’s not a totally new idea — the First State’s now-defunct Delaware Blockchain Initiative once sought to move lists of corporations’ stockholders to a state-run blockchain.

But in the case of VX Technologies, the remote-but-Philly-tied company is testing out this idea using data about officer-involved shootings from the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD). This data lives on the blockchain for the public to review and audit. Local civic technologist Lloyd Emelle, a contractor with the PPD who is responsible for the development and maintenance of the PPD’s public-facing website, partnered with VX Technologies for this project.

Why blockchain? Blockchain records have an audit trail, and it’s difficult to change information that has already been published. The goal is to introduce a new way to store PPD’s public data and hold the PPD accountable for its policing actions, VX Technologies founder Zachary Weiner told Technical.ly.

Lloyd Emelle. (Courtesy photo)

VX Technologies launched in 2021 when it designed an app to keep digital COVID-19 vaccine records, but has since evolved so clients could develop applications to store whatever data they need in whatever format they want on blockchain. Founder Zachary Weiner compared it to “WordPress for the blockchain”; its tech, called AlphaDAPP, provides templates that users can customize to suit their needs.

Emelle, who is based in Filter Square, met the Florida-based Weiner at an industry meetup event and found that they had similar interests in civic technology. Emelle was looking for a blockchain-related project and Weiner was starting one, so they decided to partner on the PPD demo.

The PPD already tracks officer-involved shooting data online. The two thought this data set would be a good fit for the blockchain demo because it has high visibility and gets updated regularly. The full dataset was up on blockchain at the end of June.

“Officer involved shootings data, that’s public already,” Emelle said. “We’re just adding a layer of reliability.”

(Sergeant Eric Gripp, public information officer with the PPD, confirmed to Technical.ly that the police department isn’t collaborating on this blockchain project with Emelle and VX Technologies, and that they’re using only public-facing data: Emelle had explained to PPD “that the purpose of potentially using VX Technologies [third-party] tools is to create redundancies and improve efficiencies with the public-facing databases on PhillyPolice.com,” Gripp said via email.)

Brett Goldman. (Courtesy photo)

In the future, this demo could expand to include mapping the police department’s existing data structures onto the blockchain, robust data encryption, covering other municipal data, and developing custom smart contracts for automation, said Brett Goldman, executive director of government affairs and strategic development at VX Technologies.

Center City-based Goldman said he thinks there’s a lot of opportunity for local government entities if they embrace this technology, and apply it to other datasets. He also thinks there’s opportunity for underserved areas across Pennsylvania to use this technology as a record-keeping solution.

“We see this as a solution to help police departments and municipalities across the state and really across the country that have limited access to digital tools, broadband, etc. to give them an easy way to hold themselves accountable,” Goldman said.

Emelle had been a co-brigade captain for Code for Philly back when it first started in 2012. He said he’d like the volunteer hacking group to eventually take on the PPD blockchain demo as an open source project.