Houston Public Safety Committee Meeting – PATH Dashboard and RMS Update – March 2, 2026
Houston Public Safety Committee Meeting – PATH Dashboard and RMS Update – March 2, 2026
On March 2, 2026, the Houston City Council Public Safety Committee convened to receive updates on two key initiatives: the Policing Analytics and Transparency Hub (PATH) from the Office of Policing Reform and Accountability, and the Records Management System (RMS) replacement project. Council Members Flickinger, Ramirez, and Alcorn were present, along with staff from multiple council offices.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Laura Gallier expressed appreciation for the PATH presentation and asked two clarifying questions: whether the Office of Policing Reform and Accountability reports to the Inspector General (yes, outside HPD) and whether individual officers are identified by name in the data. Staff from Council Member Pollard's office confirmed that officers are identified by a masked employee number, not their name, allowing for tracking of repeated issues without public identification of individuals.
Discussion Items
- Policing Analytics and Transparency Hub (PATH) Update – Presented by Christina Nowak, Deputy Inspector General. PATH replaces the legacy police transparency hub, transitioning from a map-based static system on RGIS to a dynamic, interactive dashboard on Power BI. Features include cross-dashboard filtering, automated monthly data refreshes, and multi-year trend analysis. The legacy hub will be archived soon. Current monthly views are approximately 1,300. Future enhancements under exploration include calls for service data, but no timeline is set. Questions from Council Members:
- Council Member Ramirez: Asked about calls for service data (not yet added) and whether data breaks down by immigrant status (not tracked, as categories come from state mandates).
- Council Member Flickinger: Asked if officers ask about immigration status during stops – presenters did not have that information.
- Council Member Alcorn: Praised the dashboard's granularity and asked what "incident to arrest" means in traffic stop data (presenter explained it refers to probable cause/reasonable suspicion arising during interaction).
- Council Member Davis: Inquired whether crime data includes subject age (it does not) and expressed need for youth crime data to support her existing "PPP" initiative. She requested a follow-up meeting with the presenters.
- Records Management System (RMS) Update – Presented by Director Kent, Dr. Melissa Cummins, and Brandon Williams (Chief Technology Officer). The RMS replacement project remains on schedule for an October 2026 go-live date. Upcoming actions include a March–April 2026 amendment to the VRSA term RMS agreement (zero dollar, adding the Houston Arson Bureau and community reports functionality). Financial history was reviewed: Council previously approved extensions for the incumbent Tiburon system (April 2025 and February 2026) to maintain operations until go-live. Two optional three-month extensions (totaling under $900,000) were authorized but are not anticipated to be used. No council questions followed this presentation.
Key Outcomes
- PATH is live and operational; the legacy hub will be retired. Council members offered feedback for potential enhancements, including youth crime data and calls for service.
- RMS project timeline firm: October 2026 go-live. Council will consider an amendment to the vendor agreement in March–April 2026.
- Next public safety committee meeting scheduled for Tuesday, April 14, 2026, at 10:00 AM.
- No formal votes were taken during this session; prior council approvals for RMS contract extensions were noted.
Meeting Transcript
To order. We are joined today by Council Members Flickinger, Ramirez, and Alcorn. We're also joined by staff from the offices of Councilmember Thomas, Mayor Pro Tem Castax Tatum, Selinis, Pollard, Carter, Kamen, and Vice Chair Jackson's office. Thank you everyone for being here today. Did I miss anyone? I think I got everyone. Unfortunately, HTV is having some technical issues, and we are unable to have the slides on the T. Oh, wait, I think they're trying to fix it right now. We'll go ahead and get started and start it in the interest of time. Just know that we're still working on getting the slides up for HTV. We have two presentations. The first is the Office of Policing Reform and Accountability, an update on the policing analytics and transparency hub. And then our next presentation will be about the response management system update. So first I'd like to call up Christina Nowak, Deputy Inspector General for the Office of Policing Reform and Accountability. And it looks like the presentation is up now on HTV. Hi everybody. Morning. Thank you. Yeah, that's good. Thank you. So we were here giving a brief presentation in, I believe it was July of last year, talking about our plans to modernize the dashboard and transform what was known as the police transparency hub into what we have now created as the path. So today we're just gonna build on that information. We officially launched the path. What is path? Path stands for policing analytics and transparency hub. And so we're gonna talk today a little bit about what you see when you go to the link, how that data is being shown, and the difference between how it was shown in the hub and how it is displayed now. So next slide. So Path now is a place where users can explore different transparency data sets together in one connected interactive system. It lets people see the bigger picture, not just isolated numbers. Next slide. And this further supports our mission, which is to both strengthen external transparency and internal accountability mechanisms. So the original police transparency hub was built on the RJS platform. It served as the city's first major transparency initiative. So the it provided multiple separate dashboard pages, including site and release, uh traffic stops, use of force and workforce data. However, each dashboard functioned largely in isolation. The system relied on static or semi-static visualizations. So cross-dashboard interaction was limited, meaning users could not easily analyze relationships between data sets. So the structure was heavily map centered, which was visually helpful but limited deeper analytical capability. So this does not mean the RGIS cannot uh perform analytics, but its core strength is uh spatial visualization and geospatial analysis, but not unified enterprise uh analytic ability. So that's all that means. So the legacy hub provides public visibility uh but limited integrated analysis. So this is exactly what the path was designed to improve. Next slide, please. So the path introduces dynamic interactive analytics. It allows dynamic filtering across multiple data sets, and users can drill down from year to category to incident type, allowing for layered analysis. Unlike the legacy hub, clicking one chart updates all other visuals in real time. So this cross-visual filtering significantly enhances analytical insight. We now have multi-year trend visualization built directly into the dashboards. So data refreshers are automated and scheduled, eliminating manual update cycles. Performance and response responsiveness have also improved, enhancing public usability.
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