Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Contacts in Lancaster

Rows: 3,854 
Date released by source: February 2021
Dates included in the data: January 2019 to December 2019
Published article: https://www.propublica.org/article/in-a-california-desert-sheriffs-deputies-settle-schoolyard-disputes-black-teens-bear-the-brunt



This data covers contacts with Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in Lancaster, California, during the 2019 calendar year.

ProPublica’s analysis found that of the contacts taking place in Lancaster that were listed as having “reasonable suspicion that the person was engaged in criminal activity” as the basis for the contact, a large number took place at Antelope Valley Unified High School District campuses. We also found that the contacts disproportionately involved Black teens.

We obtained raw data describing Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies’ contacts from the County of Los Angeles’ open data portal. The data describes all incidents where at least one person was detained or arrested, as well as details about each person involved in these contacts. To assess where contacts with deputies were taking place, ProPublica cleaned and geocoded the addresses reported for each contact. Contacts at schools were established based on the geocoded addresses and campus footprints obtained from Python library OSMnx. A field in the data indicating whether the contact took place at a K-12 school was not reliably populated, but we have added two columns specifying whether a contact took place at an AVUHSD school campus, and, if so, the name of the campus.
The “About the Data” section of the article provides more detail on our analysis.

Links to the County of Los Angeles’ open data portal: 
https://data.lacounty.gov/Public-Safety/LASD-Officer-Contacts-Person-Details/wraf-ix3i
https://data.lacounty.gov/Public-Safety/LASD-Officer-Contacts-Incident-Details/mwug-nk2r 
ProPublica's analysis is based on data downloaded in February 2021.