Pittsburgh Police Arrest Records with Geographic Detail

2023 data from the City of Pittsburgh Police documents arrests for offenses including felonies, parole violations, and failures to appear for trial. Information is reported at the block or intersection level, except for sex crimes which are aggregated to the police zone level. The dataset excludes incidents handled solely by other police departments operating within the city.

Use Cases

• Analyze arrest patterns for felony offenses versus other offenses like parole violations across Pittsburgh's geographic reporting units.
• Map the spatial distribution of arrests reported at the block or intersection level to identify neighborhood-level public safety trends.
• Compare reporting granularity between general arrests (block/intersection) and sex crimes (police zone) to assess data aggregation methods.

Strengths

• Data is sourced directly from the official City of Pittsburgh Police, providing an authoritative record of their arrests.
• Includes arrests for a range of offense types, from felonies to procedural violations like failure to appear for trial.
• Geographic reporting detail is specified, with most data at the block/intersection level and sex crimes at the police zone level.

Limitations

• The dataset's completeness is limited as it excludes arrests made by other police departments operating in Pittsburgh, such as campus or transit police.
• Specific data volume metrics like row count, column count, and temporal coverage beyond the last update date are unknown.
• The documentation link suggests potential complexity, requiring users to consult an external guide for full context and definitions.

Provenance

Source

City of Pittsburgh Police, managed by the Allegheny County / Western PA Regional Data Center.

Collection Method

Reported by City of Pittsburgh police officers following arrests.

Freshness

Last updated on May 14, 2023.

Geography

City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.