In undertaking this data collection, the principal investigators sought to determine (1) whether police enforcement against drug crimes, specifically heroin crimes, had any influence on the rates of nondrug crimes, and (2) what effect intensive law enforcement programs against drug dealers had on residents where those programs were operating. To achieve these objectives, data on crime rates for seven successive years were collected from police records of 30 cities in Massachusetts. Data were collected for the following offenses: murder, rape, robbery, assault, larceny, and automobile theft. The investigators also interviewed a sample of residents from 3 of those 30 cities. Residents were queried about their opinions of the most serious problem facing people today, their degree of concern about being victims of crime, and their opinions of the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies in handling drug problems.

This dataset contains crime reports from the City of Somerville Police Department's records management system from 2017 to present. Each data point represents an incident, which may involve multiple offenses (the most severe offense is provided here).

Incidents deemed sensitive by enforcement agencies are included in the data set but are stripped of time or location information to protect the privacy of victims. For these incidents, only the year of the offense is provided.

This data set is refreshed daily with data appearing with a one-month delay (for example, crime reports from 1/1 will appear on 2/1). If a daily update does not refresh, please email data@somervillema.gov.