How safe is Boulder, CO?
I wanted to investigate what crimes were being committed in Boulder and where are they occurring? I asked myself this question after living off 15th street in The Hill Neighborhood and my roommate’s car was broken into twice, my other friend had her house broken into once and car broken into twice as well. But since I moved to 17th Street, I’ve known of less crimes being committed in my area.
To investigate this issue I downloaded the crimes dataset from Boulder Open Data. This data has information about the Offense, Location of Offense, ReportID, and Date of Report dating back to 2008. The first analysis I decided to do was look at which Street Blocks were experiencing the most crime.
As you can see, the most reported areas are near Pearl Street. Pearl Street has many Bars and restaurants where students and other members of the Boulder community may interact under the influence, the main Hill Area (13th and College) near bars and late night restaurants. But then dissipates as you stray away from the bars quickly. Looking at the map visualization, you can see that the further the dot is from the central hill area, the less crime is committed. If we go back to my hypothesis that 17th street experiences less crime than 15th street, we can see on the map that the dots are a lot larger and deeper red near where I lived on 15th street compared to where I live now on 17th street near the bottom of the map.
Other hotspots on the map include the University Club area on 28th street, this area is a popular student living area which includes also has other apartment complexes nearby.
After viewing which areas were experiencing more crime, I decided to investigate how this crime has changed over time.
This animation lets us visualize the top 3 crimes in Boulder over position and time. Vandalism is in red, burglary in blue, and theft from vehicle in orange. One thing that stood out after I created this animation was the prevalence of vandalism. Over time it appears the number of vandalism cases decrease. This is supported in the next graphic which shows Vandalism, Burglary, and Theft from Vehicle by week and their trends. As you can see vandalism has been decreasing over the years. But I noticed another weird trend, almost every other year Boulder experiences an increase, then a decrease in vandalism reports, this could be an interesting area of further investigation.
While vandalism has been decreasing, the prevalence of trespassing has been increasing over the years. Looking at the graph above, vandalism started as the most charged crime in 2008, but 10 years later trespassing has overtaken as the most populous crime for 2018 and 2019.
The graph above dives a little deeper into trespassing and vandalism crimes.
I could not find a reason BoulderPD may be reporting more trespassing and less vandalism. I tried to investigate policy changes inside the police department, as well as official statements from police but could not find any data to link the trends. This may be an important area for BoulderPD to investigate.
My next analysis was looking at how crimes were committed based on day of the week. As you can see vandalism spikes on Monday and decreases mid-week then increases again Thursday. Theft from vehicle has an opposite spike. Theft from vehicles peaks Monday-Wednesday and decreases on the weekend. Burglary is most prevalent Friday and Monday with decreases Saturday and Sunday.
If we do a similar analysis but look at the crimes per month we can see more interesting spikes and dips.
The summer months experience more vandalism in Boulder, and peaks in May. This is interesting because this peak follows the schedule of when students arrive on campus. After students leave campus for the summer we can see a decrease in vandalism. And crimes such as burglary increase in the months when students are away such as January, and July. Theft from Vehicle also experiences slightly higher rates during the summer months when students are away.
When buying a home in Boulder, homeowners might be interested in where burglary is occurring in Boulder. I took the top 50 blocks reported in Boulder for burglary and ones that occurred in The Hill Neighborhood and created this animation:
As you can see, the reports are mostly surrounding the 13th and college area, as well as the university and 11th and University, these are areas where many college students are living where burglary may be easier than houses that are further left on the map where mostly non-college students reside.
Overall, living in Boulder is a safe option if you are living outside of the central hill area. This area is where many crimes are committed, and the crimes committed drastically decrease as you get further from 13th and College area.
