Philadelphia Crime Data Scraper

Philadelphia Crime Data Scraper

Scrape Philadelphia crime incident reports from the PPD public data portal, up to a million per run. Every record includes the dispatch date, district, crime type, and location coordinates. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

The Philadelphia Police Department publishes incident data on its open data portal, but browsing it page by page or downloading massive static files is slow and inflexible. This Actor reads the live feed directly, letting you pull only the reports you need by date range, district, or crime type. You get a clean, flat dataset without writing any code or managing API keys.

Who uses it	What they scrape Philadelphia Police Department for
Local journalists	Tracking crime trends in specific Philadelphia neighborhoods for a story.
Academic researchers	Building a time-series dataset of incident types for a criminology study.
Community organizers	Monitoring incident counts in their district to support grant applications.
Real estate analysts	Assessing public safety patterns when evaluating Philadelphia property markets.

What it does

This Actor collects Philadelphia crime incident reports from the PPD public data portal and returns each one as a flat row with dispatch date, district, crime type, and location.

• 📅 Date range filter: Set a start and end date to pull only incidents dispatched within a specific window.
• 🏛️ District filter: Narrow results to a single PPD district code, such as 01 or 12.
• 🔍 Crime type search: Filter by a substring of the crime description, like 'Theft' or 'Assault'.
• 📊 Flat row output: Every incident is returned as one row, ready for analysis in any spreadsheet or database.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Philadelphia Police Department data

📰 Report on neighborhood safety.

A local journalist sets a district and a three-month date range to collect incident data for a story on rising theft in Kensington.

🎓 Build a longitudinal crime dataset.

A graduate researcher runs the Actor monthly with a broad date range to compile a multi-year dataset for a spatial analysis of violent crime.

🏘️ Support a community grant proposal.

A neighborhood association pulls one year of incidents for their district to include public safety statistics in a funding application.

🏠 Evaluate a rental market.

A real estate analyst collects six months of incident data across several districts to compare safety profiles before recommending investment properties.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key needed	Reads the public data feed directly with no registration or authentication.
Flexible filtering	Combine date, district, and crime type filters to isolate exactly the incidents you care about.
Scalable collection	Pull up to a million records in a single run for large-scale analysis.
Structured output	Every record follows a fixed schema, making it easy to merge with other datasets.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets Philadelphia Police Department the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	Philadelphia Crime Data Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When Philadelphia Police Department changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor with optional date range, district, and crime type filters that are applied as each incident is read so only matching reports reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$2.10
1,000 results	$21.00
10,000 results	$210.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Philadelphia Crime Data Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Philadelphia Police Department through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/philadelphia-crime-data-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check that your date range is valid and that the district code or crime type filter is not too restrictive. Try running with only a date range first, then add filters one at a time.

The run stopped before reaching my maxItems limit.

The Actor stops when it has read all available incidents matching your filters. If fewer incidents exist in the source than your maxItems value, the run will finish early.

My date filter is not working as expected.

Ensure you are using YYYY-MM-DD format without any extra characters. The filter applies to the dispatch_date field, not the report date.

I entered a district code but got incidents from other districts.

District codes are two-digit strings like '01' or '12'. Enter the code exactly as it appears in the PPD system, including any leading zero.

The crime type filter returned unexpected results.

The filter is a substring match. Searching for 'Assault' will also return 'Aggravated Assault' and 'Simple Assault'. Use a more specific term to narrow results.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Where does the data come from?	The Actor reads from the Philadelphia Police Department's public open data portal, which publishes incident reports on an ongoing basis.
Do I need an API key or a City of Philadelphia account?	No. The Actor accesses the public data feed directly. No registration, API key, or authentication is required.
How many records can I pull in one run?	The free tier allows up to 10 incidents. Paid plans can pull up to 1,000,000 records per run.
Can I filter by a specific neighborhood?	The Actor filters by PPD district code, not by neighborhood name. You can find the district code that covers your area of interest and use that.
What date format should I use for the start and end date?	Use YYYY-MM-DD format, for example 2024-01-15. The filter applies to the dispatch date field.
How does the crime type filter work?	It performs a case-sensitive substring match on the text_general_code field. Entering 'Theft' will return all incidents where the crime description contains that word.
What export formats are supported?	You can export your dataset in CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML format from the Apify platform.
Does this Actor include victim or suspect information?	No. The data contains incident-level details like dispatch date, location, and crime type, but no personally identifiable information about individuals.
How often is the source data updated?	The PPD updates its open data portal regularly. Run the Actor on a schedule to capture new incidents as they are published.
Can I get the coordinates for mapping?	Yes. Each incident record includes latitude and longitude fields that you can use for geospatial analysis and mapping.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by City of Philadelphia. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.