Data analyst shows correlations between transit, encampments and concentrated incidents in Farmers Branch
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Summary
A spatial analysis presented to the Farmers Branch council mapped police incident data and found visual correlations between transit stops, homeless encampments and concentrations of assaults and robberies; the presenter proposed exploring microtransit routing and additional local analysis.
Alan Gwynn, a data analyst working with city incident data, told the council the city’s geocoded police records reveal spatial concentrations that merit further study.
Gwynn explained his method: ‘‘I take addresses where you have incident data, turn it into latitude and longitude because when you do that, then all of a sudden you can populate it on a map and you can include all sorts of other things.’’ Using five years of Dallas data and Farmers Branch incident records, he overlaid DART stations, bus lines, homeless encampments and incident heat maps. He said the Dallas data showed clusters of felony assaults and robberies near transit and encampments and that Farmers Branch maps show concentrated calls in areas with multifamily housing and identifiable hot spots (he cited 94 robberies in the Farmers Branch dataset for the period reviewed).
Gwynn repeatedly emphasized the limits of correlation: ‘‘Correlation does not necessarily imply causation,’’ he said, but added that the visual patterns are ‘‘certainly worth questioning’’ and ‘‘worth exploring.’’ He also mapped arrests for manufacturing/possession of controlled substances and noted where those arrests clustered.
To address service and safety issues, Gwynn proposed exploring microtransit and an open-source route-optimization tool for dynamic scheduling to improve access and potentially reduce concentrated transit-related incidents. He said scheduling variability is a main operational hurdle and suggested a summer prototype to test dynamic rebalancing.
Gwynn also presented human-impact data from Dallas: thousands of 3-1-1 reports about encampments over five years and roughly 1,200 non-homicide ‘‘non-offense’’ deaths mapped near encampments, which he said reframes the issue as a public-health and social-services challenge as much as a policing one.
Council members thanked Gwynn and requested access to the interactive maps and supporting data; Gwynn said a URL would be provided for the council to explore the visualizations.
The presentation began with item C3 and a brief introduction; Chief McCoy was cited as maintaining incident and address data used in the analysis.
