Friday, August 28, 2009

The hour of power

Yesterday's post about what went on in Lincoln on a typical Thursday morning between midnight and 5:23 AM drew out a question in a comment that I thought might be worth expanding upon. The comment (by Dave) simply asked how the 51 police dispatches compares. I responded that it was pretty typical--although the average is skewed quite a bit by Saturday and Sunday. Here's what I mean by that, police dispatches by day and hour so far this year (click to enlarge):



The bluer the cell, the lower the workload; the redder the cell the higher the demand. The red cells in this chart are more than three standard deviations from the mean. Although the hour between 4:00 and 5:00 PM is clearly the busiest one hour period during the week, the daily counts during the evening rush don't come close to 1:00 AM to 2:00 AM on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Those one hour cells are by far the busiest single hours of the week. On other days, however, the bar break hour is pretty mellow--while the evening rush hour is consistently high throughout the week.

5 comments:

Dave said...

Thanks for the numbers breakdown Chief! I always had a hunch that the early morning hours were the busiest, and seem to remember that standing out quite a bit when I worked for a security company running a night patrol. That radio was always hopping.

Further, I am glad you took my question and expanded on it, as I really doubt that the average citizen doesn't realize just how busy a cop on duty can be at times. This is one of the reasons that I like to listen to my scanner so much at home.

Again, thanks for everything, and I am really enjoying your blog, keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

A chart that males me feel warm and fuzzy, all over.

Anonymous said...

With a new fall semester started, one thing that's sure to return, just like a periodically-recurrent VD infection, are the same old cries for a lower drinking age and later bar closing times. That's what I think of when I see that chart.

Cash said...

With last night the first real college party night, how many calls did you have for the same time period you wrote on the other day (Midnight - 5:23??)?

Tom Casady said...

Cash-

It was indeed a busy morning. There were 98 dispatches between midnight and 5:23 AM, including 11 party disturbances and 11 drunk drivers, a dozen assaults, 4 mental health investigations, and lots of other stuff.