Adding Police Substations in New York City
New York City is featured in crime novels, movies, and newspapers regarding their crime rates. This problem serves to provide an accurate analysis to the NYPD regarding where police substations may help curb crime rates. Areas must be analyzed and determined to be both afflicted with crime and in lack of law enforcement facilities in order to qualify as viable options.
Because of the high population in New York City, there is already a large police presence that exists. We must analyze areas that both do not have significant police presence and have increased crime rates in order to identify the optimal location.
DATA:
The data used in this analysis was vast. All reported crime in New York City from 2014–2015 was used. Foursquare was used to determine present police facilities in New York City.
Police Presence:
There were 30 different police locations included in this analysis. The locations of these stations in relation to the crime reported needed to be taken into account. The stations are indicated by the blue markers below.
Crimes Reported:
With over one million crimes under NYPD’s jurisdiction reported between 2014 and 2015, there is a plethora of information to consider. Operating with this many data points would be messy, so the data had to be cleaned. Crimes that fell under other jurisdictions, such as Customs and Immigration, were discounted from the information. Additionally, while insightful, crimes that were attempted but stopped by police were removed from the data set.
The data was sorted down into completed crimes, leaving over 886,000 reported crimes. In order to process all of the data effectively, given the present computing capabilities, an analysis was conducted to find the highest crime area in New York City.
Crime Findings:
It was found that the “hot spot” of crime committed was in Queens, near the intersection of N-495 and N-278. It was found that the most committed crime is Petit Larceny. The Average Crime Epicenter is indicated by the red marker on the map below.
Finding a range of solutions:
It is impossible to simply plop down a police substation on a specific coordinate, and options will vary depending on property available. We must find a range of effectiveness for the substation so that a variety of locations can be used. In order to do this, the average distance between effective police presence will be taken into account, creating a range for our new substation.
The below scatter chart identifies the different latitudes and longitudes of police location in New York City. The average effective range was identified to be 0.01693795426558219, indicative of a shift in latitude and longitude.
Conclusion
New York City has a significant crime increase in areas where police presence is smaller. Through an analysis of attemped versus completed crime, it becomes apparent where the largest issue lies. This analysis has broken down a possible area for the most effective police substation addition to New York City. Now that the area is identified, New York City can begin investigating property possibilities, performing an analysis on cost and allocated budget to decide the exact best lot.
Through the addition of a new police substation at the allocated coordinates, New York City’s attempted crime rate will decrease.