Labels

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Washington DC Crime

The DC Metropolitan Police Department is interested in patterns of crime relative to the location of existing police stations, to see if current patrols are effective or if adjustments may be necessary.

This is a basemap of the area showing roads, police stations, census blocks, and incidents of crime during August 2009.
Types of crimes committed were shown in the chart on the above map.  This is an expanded view of that chart.

We were interested in the proximity of crime to police stations.  This map shows buffers indicating 0.5 mi., 1 mi., and 2 mi. from the police stations. Two-thirds of the crime incidents during August 2009 occurred within one mile of the police stations.

It might make sense to put new stations at some distance from existing stations, and near identified areas of crime incidents. Of all possible locations, the southern-most spot, located outside of the Seventh Police District, is most needed.

Drilling down the data further from the last map, here is crime associated with the most proximal police station. This graph shows the number of crimes committed in August 2009, by nearest police station to which the crime incident occurred.


12.39% of the crime during this month occurred near the Seventh Police District.

The DC police department is also interested in patterns of aggravated assault, sex abuse crimes and homicides.

Burglaries occur far more often (by census block population) than sex abuse crimes or homicides.
In the District of Columbia there are drug-free zones within 1,000 ft. of schools. There are additional, mandatory, tough penalties for arrests related to drug crimes (use, purchase, or sale of illegal drugs) in these zones.

King Elementary school had the highest number of crimes (89) occurring within it's surrounding 1000 ft. buffer. Only one of these crimes was a drug-related offense.

No comments:

Post a Comment