On Independence Day, Angelenos Can Get Rowdy

We analyzed the past two years of crime data for July 4.
Independence Day can lead to an explosion of felony vandalism in the City of Los Angeles.

In 2017, there were 63 incidents. That’s 4.12 standard deviations above the daily average of 34.

Independence Day also saw a spike in firearm discharges. In 2017, 4 firearm incidents happened on Independence Day. That’s 2.69 standard deviations above a typical day.

Both Venice and Watts saw an unusual increase of crimes on Independence Day in 2016 and 2017, with more crimes in burglary and assault respectively.

How we did it

We used crime data for the past two years from Los Angeles Police Department to create a baseline of how frequently certain crimes are reported. Then, we compared that against crimes reported on July 4 for the past two years. We calculated the standard deviation of the frequency that certain crimes took…

Continued

… place on Independence Day from how frequently they usually occur. Standard deviation quantifies the amount of variation that one set of values has from the norm. We then examined the crimes with the most unusual increases on Independence Day both in 2016 and 2017, and the neighborhood deviation for all crime types during the same period.