What do five years of St. Paul police calls for service look like? The Pioneer Press analyzed the approximately 250,000 calls and found:

Suspected theft is by far the most requested call for help.

Neighborhoods along highways and business corridors called the most.

Police officials warn that the data, from August 2014 through November 2019, are not a final representation of crimes that occurred. On-scene investigations often lead police to different circumstances and evidence than what was initially reported.

But the data do provide a detailed understanding of how and where officers have spent their time over the past five years. City leaders also use the data to have an up-to-date understanding of how police are interacting with residents.

“We look at it as a snapshot in time to know what is going on in our city at a particular point,” said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a police spokesman. “It is not an exhaustive list of every call in our system.”

The information includes calls made by community members for help and records of police proactively checking an area or a business.

A LOOK AT THE MAP

St. Paul categorizes its police calls into a grid system that divides the city up into 203 sections of roughly the same size.

The area with the most calls is an area bounded by University, Hamline, Marshall and Snelling avenues with more than 8,200 crime calls over the five years. That’s 3.9 percent of all the calls police responded to during that time.

The area with the least calls was just east of the Mississippi River and north of Pigs Eye Lake had just 14 police calls in five years.

Ernster notes that parts of the city with more businesses or denser populations will often have higher rates of police calls. The map shows neighborhoods near downtown and along Interstate 94, for example, having higher rates of calls than those farther away.

WHAT ARE MOST CALLS ABOUT?

Theft accounted for 22 percent of the calls analyzed by the newspaper. Vandalism and auto theft were the next two most common offenses representing 7 percent and 6 percent of the calls respectively.

More than 40 percent were for “proactive policing,” which includes anything from “an officer checking an area where there’s been an increase in crime or trying to engage with community there to find out what’s going on,” Ernster said. “They weren’t called there, but they were trying to be proactive to address issues in that area.”

Left out of the data are less serious quality-of-life calls and other stops police make as part of routine patrols, Ernster said.

Related Articles 2 men shot, 1 fatally, near bar on St. Paul’s Grand Avenue

Minneapolis man pleads guilty to torching University Avenue business during May unrest

MN woman facing murder charges for ignoring daughter’s medical alarms

Charges: 17-year-old shot 15-year-old in face during marijuana deal in St. Paul

St. Paul man poured poisonous chemicals on ex-wife in Roseville park, according to attempted murder charges Communities are required to report crime statistics each year to the state and federal governments. Those statistics are compiled from more complete investigatory reports, police said.

For instance, the dataset of initial police calls shows officers responded to just 26 homicide calls over five years. That’s because police are often called to scenes of shootings or other types of violence that turn into a homicide investigation. St. Paul has recorded 30 homicides in 2019 alone.

Mara H. Gottfried contributed to this report.