Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Location of knife assaults

I was doing some impromptu research this morning on the number of knife assaults in Lincoln when I noticed an ususual phenomenon. This map shows the location of the 91 assaults with cutting instruments this year.


The yellow line is the approximate location of Van Dorn Street. There are two knife assaults south of Van Dorn. This area has a population of around 70,000: about 28% of the population, but only 2.2% of this type of assault. Although this part of Lincoln is generally low crime, it had 11% of the assaults overall.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice

Dave said...

And friends wonder why I seldom wander north of O st. Friends started kidding me about it a few years ago, and slowly I realized they are right, I don't go north of O street often.

Anonymous said...

Would it be easy to map firearm assaults in the same way?

Tom Casady said...

Dave-

That strategy won't work. The majority of knife assaults have been south of O Street: 52 of 91. Maybe you should stay west of I-180, instead.

5:53-

So far this year, 14% (5 of 35) assaults in which firearms were used or threatened have been south of Van Dorn Street.

Anonymous said...

Thank you! I figured your GUI was better than mine. That distribution fit my hunch, but you know hunches. Spotcrime lets one plot shootings in Omaha (do so, they're pretty much where you're thinking), but on their Lincoln map, "shootings" isn't functional. Probably due to reporting differences, not breaking them out of all assaults as a separate type

ARRRRG!!!! said...

I just spend more time north of Van Dorn.

Anonymous said...

Chief,
How many of the knife assaults were domestic? Stranger on stranger? In commission of a robbery?

Gun Nut

Tom Casady said...

Gun Nut-

You've got a lot of questions! Two are easy: 30 of the knife assaults were domestic; none of the knife assaults were in the commission of a robbery. If they had been, the case would be classified as robbery--not assault. There have been 9 robberies with knives so far this year.

Your other question, stranger-on-stranger, is more difficult. There is no data field that I can query on the victim-offender relationship, so it would require some research into each of the 61 non-domestic cases.

Trevor said...

People don't live in S. Lincoln because it is the best place to live (it can be rather boorish and dull). Rather, they live there as the alternatives are so much worse (theivery, gunshots, and stabbings, OH MY!).

Anonymous said...

To ARRRRG!!!,
Let me guess, you're the fat guy with the flat top?

Anonymous said...

Does that map count swords?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-sword0915,0,4027961.story

Tom Casady said...

2:04-

Yep, technically it's "knife or cutting instrument," so our data includes a box cutter, scissors, seam ripper, and a couple other sharp things. No swords this year, although we've had some in the past. There's a lot of speculation that this case was a sword or machete of some sort, just from the length and depth of the lacerations, but the victim doesn't know.