About the Map

The map displays about 36,000 calls for service by default, and points can be clicked on to display all calls received in the data period (Oct. 1, 2023 - July 25, 2024). To view specific call types (e.g., Assaults, Shots Fired incidents, Traffic Stops, etc.), one can click the white Layers button in the upper-right corner.

Sheriff Lewis stated in 2020 that "we are in the African-American communities more than we are anywhere else because that's where we receive the bulk of our calls". We hope you can use this map to determine the veracity of that statement for yourself.

Reports for calls where the outcome indicates that a report was filed can be procured via a Maryland Public Information Act request. In most cases, acquiring a single report in this way will be free; the MPIA prevents fees from being charged for up to two hours of employee time. The linked website details the request process, but it ultimately consists of a simple email to a WCSO staff member.

Points on the map are color-coded by the number of calls received to a particular address. While most addresses on the map are accurately placed, the geocoding service used to acquire latitude/longitude points associated with each address may be inaccurate in some cases. All addresses are given as "hundred blocks" (i.e., if a Call for Service was received to 123 Easy Street, the call would be recorded on the data sheet as 100 Easy Street). Some addresses were unable to be geocoded at all and have not been recorded in the map. These addresses account for approximately 2% of the original data scraped.

More serious crimes where protection of the identities of individuals involved is necessary are recorded with a zero as the address number (i.e., a serious crime reported at the aforementioned address would be recorded as "0 Easy Street"). The Sheriff's Office appears to have attempted to suppress location information entirely for these calls by blanking out the "Address" column in the data sheet, but they have just set the text color for the address to white(!), which renders it readable as usual to scraping programs and anyone who knows how to copy and paste text. A sample data PDF is available here.

Data is scraped from www.wicomicosheriff.com. Analysis and geocoding performed in Python using Nominatim. Map generated using Folium, which runs on Leaflet. Background map from OpenStreetMap.