Homeless people account for less than 3 percent of Portland's overall population, but in 2017, they accounted for 52 percent of police arrests.

The Oregonian/OregonLive analyzed data from the Portland Police Bureau and found that more than half of the arrests officers made last year were of homeless people.

As we reported June 27, we found this by analyzing all of the 19,730 arrests police made last year. We counted people as homeless if they were listed in police records as either homeless, transient or listed a shelter or transitional housing as an address.

The police bureau ran a similar analysis after learning of our findings and identified the same arrest disparity.

Most commonly, police arrested homeless people on property, drug or low-level offenses.

Homeless people were arrested more frequently than others, but were less likely to be arrested for violent crimes.

We wanted to provide a deeper look at the analysis that drove our reporting. Here are some of the questions we had when looking at the data and that we've received since publishing our story.

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Q: What is the arrest trend over 2017?

Homeless people composed the majority of arrests for each month of last year starting in April.

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Melissa Lewis

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Q: What were the most common charges beyond warrants?

Charges in red are categorized as violent crimes.

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Melissa Lewis

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Q: How many arrests solely resulted from procedural charges -- a warrant or probation violation?

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Melissa Lewis

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Q: How many arrests were for violent crimes?

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Melissa Lewis

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Q: What were the most common violent crime charges?

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Melissa Lewis

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Q: What are the racial demographics of all people arrested?

Because the U.S. Census Bureau does not treat Hispanic or Latino as a separate racial category, its meaning may not be the same as that used in Portland Police Bureau data. This may also underlie differences between arrest percentages and population percentages.

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Melissa Lewis

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Q: Are racial demographics different among homeless people arrested?

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Melissa Lewis

Homeless population data source: 2017 point-in-time counts

General population data source: 2016 American Community Survey

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We'll continue to analyze and report from this data, but we want to hear from people. Do you have a data-driven question you'd like to ask? Do you have a story to tell? You can contact us through any of the methods below.

-- Melissa Lewis

mlewis@oregonian.com

503-221-4316; @iff_or

-- Rebecca Woolington

rwoolington@oregonian.com

503-294-4049; @rwoolington