The Bend Police Department will begin providing to the public a monthly accountability report that identifies key crime and budget statistics.

Bend Police Chief Jeff Sale and City Manager Eric King say the report, which will serve as a snapshot of how the police department is spending its time and money, will allow the department and the city to figure out where best to focus resources and show the public how the department operates.

King said the monthly report will allow the community to make informed decisions about acceptable levels of service, and he hopes the report can be a communication tool that lets “decision-makers in our community know what’s the data behind the activity of the police department, how it all relates together and how funding correlates to crime.”

Sale said he uses the monthly reports as an administrative tool but will also have them on the department’s website and will send them to a distribution list.

“It’s a quick overview of the department,” he said. “It gives supervisors and managers a quick look and helps them organize. … It puts it out in front of everyone.”

Right now, the report is focused primarily on the patrol division, but plans are in the works to expand it to include other parts of the department, such as investigations.

King hopes the reports, to be issued on the second Wednesday of each month, will allow the community to see what types of calls officers are responding to and to understand better why different incidents have different police responses. He also hopes the reports will allow police to make a more focused effort on types of crime or areas of the city that need the most help.

“It allows us to manage our resources rather than running around,” he said. “We’re trying to get away from that Whac-A-Mole type of response.”

For example, if there is a spike in assaults in the downtown area at 2 a.m. each Saturday, police can then focus on patrolling that area at that time.

An 11-page February accountability review starts with a list of budget highlights, including how much overtime officers have earned thus far during the fiscal year, as well as how much money was spent on training, vehicle maintenance and fuel, and other supplies and equipment. It includes comparisons from the previous year and shows what percentage of the total budget has been used up.

“It lets supervisors figure out how they’re going to offset (costs) because I’m not going to give them extra cash,” Sale said.

The report also includes a monthly crime activity overview, focused entirely on violent crimes ranging from theft and arson to burglary and rape. The February document shows how the month’s crimes compare to January 2013, as well as to February 2012 and also provides a year-to-date look at the number and type of crimes.

Sale said he then asks a data analyst to delve deeper into areas of concern.

The report also includes a look at other metrics, including how many calls for service the department receives each month, how many arrests and citations the police are making each month, and how many car accidents take place each month.

The reports are already revealing. For example, the data reveal that so far in 2013, violent crime is up 29 percent from the same time in 2012. And calls for service are down significantly now that the police department has implemented online crime reports.

Ultimately, Sale hopes his managers will closely examine the daily operations of the department more closely.

“We want to use it as an evaluation tool that shows successes or failures and identifies if we’re doing what we want to do,” he said.

King said that while the police department is the first to implement the accountability reports, other city departments will also start creating similar reports that place an emphasis on what he calls “performance metrics.”

Once the public safety accountability report is fine-tuned, King plans to work on similar reports about infrastructure and economic and community development.

Those reports will also compare Bend to other cities, including Oregon cities with similar populations like Beaverton, Medford and Gresham, and cities around the West that have similar demographic data, like Bozeman, Mont.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; and St. George, Utah.