Richmond Indiana Police Activity repository

This repository contains scripts and reports of the Richmond Indiana Police Department and Wayne County Indiana Sheriff's Department activity, as reported by these agencies in their media reports (see https://sheriff.co.wayne.in.us/media-reports.html and http://www.co.wayne.in.us/rpdmedia.html, respectively). The data are taken from 2018 reports by default, but a different date range can be selected if the user would like to customize these reports (see Level 3: Generate New Reports below).

There are three different levels to which a user can interact with these data, and the prerequisites and approach for each is given below.

Level 1: View the existing activity maps

Prerequisities

None

Approach

The exisiting data can be analyzed online here: https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/pjireland/RichmondPoliceData/blob/master/activity_map.ipynb.

Level 2: Generate new maps from the existing dataset

Prerequisites

1. Install Jupyter using Anaconda and conda following the instructions here.

2. Install folium:

pip install folium

3. Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/pjireland/RichmondPoliceData.git

Approach

1. Run Jupyter Notebooks from within the cloned RichmondPoliceData repository:

jupyter notebook

and select the activity_map.ipynb file.

2. Add additional police maps to the bottom of the notebook. Some tips for adding these maps:

• The command create_map() is called to generate the maps.
• The following optional arguments can be passed to the create_map() function:
  • dots: True or False. True by default. Includes dots showing each recorded police activity. More information can be obtained by clicking each dot.
  • static_heat_map: True or False. True by default. Includes a static heat map of the police activity.
  • time_lapse_heat_map: True or False. False by default. Generates a month-by-month series of heat maps.
  • include: Empty by default. A list of words to limit the police activity to. If this argument is not provided, all activity will be shown.
  • exclude: Empty by default. Ignore police reports that contain any of the words in this list.

Level 3: Generate new reports

Prerequisites

1. A shell with a bash.

   • For Unix, Linux, and Mac systems, this should be included by default.
   • For Windows machines, git bash can be installed to obtain a bash prompt.

2. Anaconda and Jupyter Notebooks

3. Python client library for Google Maps API Web Services. This can be installed via the command

pip install googlemaps

It is used to geocode (obtain the latitude and longitude) of police incidents.

4. Sign up for a Google Maps API key.

   • Note that that while Google Maps API is a paid service, the monthly free allowances are typically sufficient for geocoding the police data, but be careful to not exceed your free allowance.

Approach

1. Run the command below to download and parse police reports:

bash get_police_reports.sh <API_KEY> <YEAR>

Replace <API_KEY> with your Google Maps API key and <YEAR> with the year you would like to analyze.

2. Follow the directions in the Approach subsection Level 2: Generate new maps from the existing dataset above to generate new maps from the new data you have created.