Digging into the Data: What City Reporting Reveals About Crime

Hannah Hoffman
2 days ago
7 min read

Statistics Show Overall Decrease in Incidents Within City

One morning in May 2023, Naomi Beech (whose name has been changed to protect her privacy) walked out of her Historic District home in the City of Laurel planning to commute to work just as she had done every other weekday. Instead, she opened the driver’s side door of her Kia Seoul and was greeted with a vandalized interior and destroyed steering column. Neighborhood Ring camera footage showed a group of individuals attempting to steal several vehicles in the area that night.

“I’m fortunate they didn’t steal the actual car, but the damage they did was significant and extremely costly.” Beech remembers receiving local repair quotes in the thousands of dollars, with long wait periods to be serviced. “The shop said it would be weeks until it could be fixed. They said they had so many Kias in the queue from other attempted thefts and break-ins.”

Unfortunately, Beech’s experience was shared by several other city residents in 2023 and continued into 2024 and 2025. According to publicly accessible data from the Laurel Police Department (LPD), between 2023 and 2025 the city experienced 2,921 cases of “Theft/Larceny” and 779 cases of “Motor Vehicle Theft.”

Voices of Laurel reviewed publicly available reports from the LPD and the State of Maryland to identify possible trends and patterns and to bring awareness to city residents about their community.

Visualizing any data provides an opportunity to seek additional insight into city events and activity. Understanding gained from this type of analysis can enable better strategic decision-making, leading to more meaningful community engagement and policy approach. Transparency across this process, including the data collected and responses deployed, keeps city residents informed and city officials accountable.

At a state level, the Governor’s Office of Crime and Prevention provides the public with visibility into the data through their Public Safety Data Dashboard, hosted online. However, the most recent data available from the state is outdated, from 2024. Additionally, the presentation of incident data remains separate from the presentation of any policy or program-related response data. This makes it nearly impossible to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of tactics.

The LPD provides the public with updates on two primary platforms, the LPD website and social media. A few media outlets re-post the data within their own publications. Reporting by the LPD consists of a “Monthly Crime Report” that summarizes a single month’s crime tally across four primary categories (Violent Crime, Property Crime, DUI Arrests, and Traffic Collisions) and nine subcategories. The LPD also provides a more detailed reporting view on their website in table format that shows a log of individual reports within a given month. Each row includes four fields: incident date, classification, location (intersection or block), and summary. These line-item reports also include a disclaimer that the report may not be inclusive of all incidents.

Voices of Laurel spent dozens of hours researching, collecting, curating, and analyzing data from the City of Laurel. In the process, several data discrepancies and errors were found throughout the LPD published reports.

When asked about the city’s relationship with the LPD and deeper visibility into crime trends and resulting policy, Laurel City Councilman Adrian Simmons of Ward 1 says that the Council currently does not receive regular briefings from the police department, but that this does occur within the Executive Branch in weekly meetings. Council members are often looped in by the LPD for higher profile incidents, but for normal coverage they track the same information made available to residents via social media and news outlets, plus what they hear from residents.

The Analysis

Data from the Maryland Governor’s Office (2024) shows that among 24 cities within Prince George’s County, Laurel has the third-highest crime rate at 5,186 crimes per 100,000 people (~5%), behind Landover Hills (~5.8%) and Fairmount Heights (~5.9%). When the data is reduced to show only Violent Crime (Assault, Murder, Rape, and Robbery), the City of Laurel drops to 16th place, demonstrating that most of Laurel’s crime is Property Crime. Police Chief Russ Hamill, Deputy Chief of Police Mark Plazinski, and Major John Hamilton explained in a sit-down with Voices of Laurel that they are not fully confident in the results of these rankings by the state. They say that the LPD does its part to contribute complete information to the state for reporting purposes, but they cannot speak about the consistency and quality of data submitted by other police departments. One key example is the varying terminology used across different municipalities to classify crimes. When data is not “apples-to-apples,” LPD says, the results in ranking may be misleading.

LPD monthly crime reports posted on their website and social media platforms aggregated and analyzed by Voices of Laurel determined that between 2023 and 2025, overall city crime decreased by 8.6%. Property Crimes accounted for 62% of total crime reports. Traffic Collisions and DUI Arrests together accounted for 31%, while Violent Crimes were just 7% of the total.

Data provided separately to Voices of Laurel by the LPD shows that Theft from Auto crime decreased by 36% over that same two-year period, while Shoplifting crime increased by 44%. Standard LPD reporting provided to the public and published on social media platforms does not distinguish between different theft-related crimes. Theft from Vehicle, Auto Theft, Shoplifting, and other types of theft-crime are all bundled into the monthly reporting category “Property Crime” and subcategory “Theft/Larceny.”

Policy & Response

In May 2023, the LPD began offering steering wheel locks to residents at no charge, prompted by the uptick in Kia and Hyundai thefts. The program, that is still active today, could be a contributing factor in the decline of total Motor Vehicle Thefts, which consistently declined year-over-year, falling 37% from 2023 (314 reports) to 2025 (199 reports).

The LPD says they are especially grateful to those in the community who have volunteered a substantial number of photos and video evidence from their home and business cameras by scanning a QR code posted through LPD online channels. The QR code is often promoted after a major crime event and directs users to the LPD Evidence Submission Portal, where they can anonymously submit information and content. After the crime spree in December 2025, multiple Laurel community members used the QR code system to submit evidence. In several recent incidents, this type of footage helped lead the LPD to critical arrests.

When it comes to opinions about city speed and red-light cameras, city residents are not afraid to speak up, especially on social media. Some residents support the installation of cameras as they believe it deters speeding and reduces vehicle and pedestrian accidents. Others are concerned about the financial repercussions from the rising violation fees and question the effectiveness. More than 170 comments were posted on a June 2025 LPD social media post announcing three new speed cameras on Rt. 198 and Rt. 1. One person pointed out they didn’t believe the cameras would make a difference: “…speed cameras are only about revenue, not safe roads.” Another person wanted to see the data behind the decisions: “I would like to see a link to a website that shows where these cameras are posted [and] the study that was conducted in these 3 areas showing that speed was the primary contributing factor to car accidents or other incidents due to speed…”

Using data collected and curated by the Maryland Department of Transportation, the detailed line item reports from LPD, and lists provided by the LPD on locations of red-light and speed cameras, Voices of Laurel’s analysis found that in 2025, 100% of pedestrian strikes reported by LPD and 74% of city crash reports were within the same 0.75 mile radius near Baltimore Avenue.

Chief Hamill, Deputy Chief Plazinski, and Major Hamilton clarified the process that takes place in these instances. LPD will often hear feedback from the community about roadway safety. The department considers this feedback in combination with collision data when implementing any type of ticketing device or deterrent. They then work with city administrators to conduct a traffic study. If the results of the study determine an area to be unsafe or problematic, the city and LPD will partner to discuss the circumstances and implement an appropriate solution like speed cameras, red light cameras, speed bumps, etc.

The caption to the Facebook post informing residents of the new speed camera states, “This initiative aims to improve traffic safety and reduce speeding in our community.” However, while this may be true, the LPD has not publicly communicated any evidence to support these claims. Providing additional context and background on the installation of these camera locations—for example, the collision data both prior to and after a camera is installed—could improve the community’s understanding of these tactics. Dissemination of information like this may also lead certain residents to feel both more informed and confident that the city is investing in productive solutions and policy.

Hamill says that the LPD is concerned with every crime and crime victim within the city. “We conduct detailed analysis to determine how to deploy our measures to most positively affect our community. I believe LPD does a good job of working with our community, but we also believe we can always do better.”

Simmons says that his goal as a member of the City Council is to advocate for Laurel residents on issues important to them, such as reducing crime levels and improving safety.

“For me, the enjoyable part of the job is being able to help people get to the bottom of whatever they’re trying to figure out,” he notes. In a follow-up email, Simmons writes, “I know the LPD is actively tracking and responding to trends they’re seeing and would look forward to their analysis and understanding of what factors are at play and recommendations they have—if there’s things we can do to help improve or shift the trend.”

See more of Hannah Hoffman's data visualizations in the gallery below:

Hannah Hoffman is a Laurel resident of six years with a background in data and technology. For this article she spent dozens of hours collecting, researching, and mining through the data.