Walking The Beat – Mining Seattle's Police Report Data | Hacker News Reader

Walking The Beat – Mining Seattle's Police Report Data

bayesimpact.org

86 pointsajiang29 comments

Perhaps data mining will succeed where common sense hasn't in convincing the East Precinct to walk the streets and parks within a couple blocks of the station. Cal Anderson and Pike/Pine are regularly sites of hate crimes, brawls, muggings, and shootings, but I rarely see any on-foot police presence. Seems like it would be easy-mode patrol - grab a coffee, walk outside, and spook a few punks into moving along instead of sticking around.

Used to work on 3rd and Pine (in the offices above, not slinging on the corner).

There were cops there all the time - but honestly, it seemed like they were mostly just maintaining order, not stopping the dealing. The "unofficial" rumor around the city is that the police department worked to corral most dealing into specified locations (think: Hamsterdam) as a part of their containment strategy. Sure they raid it once in a while to nab up some dealers, but I'm still convinced that was just for public appearances.

That may not be a bad thing... Work a few blocks over from there and the difference is startling. Having it concentrated in one place where they can keep an eye on it seems to me like it may be a quite effective strategy since it would effectively keep it out of the rest of downtown.

I think it's a fantastic strategy; dealers are going to deal SOMEWHERE because they're meeting a massive demand; might as well keep an eye on it and minimize violence(e.g., South Seattle)

We've gotten somewhat fortunate though, as the violence hasn't ticked upward much at all in that area due to no turf wars cropping up in such a prominent area. I think the city would be a lot harsher on the area if that changed.

Yeah that would certainly explain the large number of individuals selling crack in broad daylight around the bus stops on 3rd Ave.

I just wish they had chosen to corral the crack dealing somewhere away from the street with all the bus stops on it. It makes it feel unsafe to commute downtown on the bus.

Fair enough - I do think the location is less than ideal, but watch - anytime they raid the area, those dealers scatter and a short burst of violence picks up elsewhere in the city as known dealing areas are contested (anecdotal based off just what I see via the SPD report feeds, maybe I'm projecting).

In all honesty though, I used to stay late at work once in a while, and sure the area feels rough at night, it's almost always harmless.

There is a reason why that area has the nickname "murder bus stop"

Yes, I've been through Seattle quite a few times. There are very distinct modes of separation that are very noticeable, where the barriers are not obvious. No visible walls separating ghettos, or various minorities and whites. Go to the right places at the right time and it is very much apparent.

edit: There was a street downtown near Lake Union when I had to work for a client in their Lake Union offices. On my way on a late night project I happened to drive right along one of these 'corridors'. It's not Pine/Pike, but further North and South of Lake Union. It was basically an entire row of street blocks that acted as if it was an invisible barrier. It was very noticeable there, and elsewhere as well. I think it's a new type of policing strategy.

Looks like they have implemented "containment zones" like the ones in SF.

In SF, the police have established containment zones where typical low-level crimes (like dealing, prostitution, disorderly conduct, etc.) are not pursued aggressively (if at all). For example, 6th and Mission neighborhood and the Tenderloin. This way the undesirables have an incentive to gravitate towards these areas, and it's easier for the cops to keep an eye on them. Sure, it sucks for the regular people who live there, but it is what it is; it keeps the rest of the city "clean" and the taxpaying public happy.

Especially with how close the precinct station is to Cal Anderson. We're talking ~3 blocks. Maybe it's a case of understaffing and/or suboptimal allocation of officers? I imagine Pike from 12th down past Broadway becomes a primary focus later at night. I imagine that's when most crime in Cal Anderson occurs. Time-of-day data would be awesome in this set.

I know, it's so close they could probably just put a guy with binoculars on the roof and have him yell "HEY" when someone's being shady.

> when someone's being shady

in Cal Anderson park that's a roundabout way of saying "always"

What hate crimes?

Beatings and muggings targeting gays, primarily. Been more than a few.

Can you link some of these?

Here's a recent one:

http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/08/11/man-arrested-after-...

More information: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/08/man-arrested-for-u...

One big follow up we want to do is to taking a number of hypotheses based on observations, such as yours, and dive into the data to flesh out. More data is needed (patrol patterns, modes of transportation, etc.), but even with analysis of open data I think we can point to enough evidence to merit more work.

My totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theory is that the police intentionally contain crimes to Cal Anderson and Pike/Pine to prevent crime from spreading outwards to the more gentrified areas of northern and eastern Capitol Hill, as well as to provide downward pressure on gentrification within the Pike/Pine corridor.

Or the crime is on pike/pine because the densest area where the most people live, and poore people always live in smaller homes which means denser population.

Or it's a conspiracy, I guess.

Awesome. Did the police department release this data willingly or from a FOIA request? I've been trying to get this exact type of data from local police departments but I've never seen it with Lat/Longs and clearance.

Hi comrh, Seattle has been really great at releasing data. Not sure whether or not it came from a FOIA request, but I know from working with Joy Bonaguro (Chief Data Officer of San Francisco) that SF has been working with the police department as well to release as much data as possible in leveraging data science to help fight crime.

The data from Seattle is located here: https://data.seattle.gov/Public-Safety/Seattle-Police-Depart...

The data from San Francisco is located here: https://data.sfgov.org/Public-Safety/SFPD-Reported-Incidents...

I wholeheartedly agree that police data should be available from all cities / counties with the type of detail that SF and Seattle show. Open Data Standards are still not where they need to be. If you're interested in helping civic organizations get there, shoot me a message -- we're actively working with Federal and municipal governments on this.

You can find some data of mixed completeness/usefulness here[1]. Data.gov has gotten much better in terms of usability over the past few years, but it's still a crapshoot, and it's generally more effective to go directly to the agency/organization that you want data from/about. I think it's a great idea though, and I hope it's not the sort of thing that will get neglected or die if there's a party change at the White House level (although I suspect that could easily happen).

[1] http://catalog.data.gov/dataset?q=police&sort=score+desc%2C+...

http://data.seattle.gov is powered by Socrata. Here is a list of cities that they support: https://opendata.socrata.com/dataset/Socrata-Customer-Spotli...

The Seattle PD is very open about their data. Every single beat has it's own twitter stream of dispatches (delayed by an hour, for obvious security reasons): http://www.seattle.gov/police/tweets/

Whenever I hear a bunch of sirens driving by, it's great to know that in short order I'll see what was happening in my Twitter feed.

It's interesting that they delay the Twitter by an hour. You can get real time 911 info for Seattle here.

http://www2.seattle.gov/fire/realtime911/getRecsForDatePub.a...

afaict from checking that site for years, that's only fire department responders, not police.

Holy crap. Wow I have a serious respect for the Seattle PD now, that is very open.

edit: I found out why that one is real time. It isn't Seattle PD but Seattle Fire. (https://twitter.com/SeattlePD/status/502651325117526016)

Blog post and data mining done by Jeff Wong, one of our data science mentors who is currently a Senior Data Scientist at Netflix. His own blog is at http://jeffreycwong.com -- check it out, there are some truly awesome pieces for data scientists.

"NULL" comes between person down/injury and robbery.

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