Thursday •  September 26, 2024

Police Response and Lockdown Data (2017 – 2023) for Howard County (HCPSS) and Carroll County (CCPS) Public School Systems

By Steven Keller

Author’s NoteFirst and foremost, sincere apologies to longtime HoCo Watchdogs readers and to the Howard County public on the tardiness of this publication. In 2023, family circumstances relocated me beyond Howard County borders, and as a result, despite final data being collected over 9 months ago, this post has been on the back burner for a long time. With so much data to parse through and present, the biggest question that has slowed its delivery to the public has been “How can this all be shared informatively and without writing a dissertation?”

Instead of holding this information back from publication any longer by spending tens of hours more to summarize all of the content with thousands of words, perhaps the best approach will be to publish all of the tables and plots that have been generated so far, along with the original spreadsheet files received from the Howard County Police Department, and leave it to fellow Howard County Watchdogs and casual readers to examine and analyze further.

With that introduction, let’s dive in. Shown below is data on Howard County Police Department responses to Howard County Public Schools (HCPSS) and Carroll County Public Schools (CCPS) for the six-year timeframe of January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2023.

Also included is data on full and modified school lockdowns that have taken place over that timeframe at HCPSS and CCPS schools.

 

Here is a link to the full data repository that served as the starting point for this post. This data was obtained directly from the Howard County and Carroll County Police Departments and Public School Central Offices through Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) requests:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LlXV6AuoHvAVLtmxohC7yRAuEcNhxRfo?usp=sharing

 

Some preliminary notes: 

  • The data presented covers Howard County Police Department responses to schools within the Howard County Public School System between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2023.

 

  • This data *only* includes incidents that caused a Howard County Police Department response to HCPSS schools. Excluded from this report are all incidents occurring at HCPSS schools that did not involve a formal county police department response and were handled strictly with internal (school system and/or school resource officer (SRO)) disciplinary and investigative measures. (This can be explored with followup public information requests to HCPSS regarding individual school disciplinary action records).

 

  • The data presented here focuses on police reports/codes that are likely to be of highest interest to HCPSS students, parents and staff members. Data excluded from the tables and plots presented below are such police codes as traffic incidents, responses to business alarms, routine patrol etc.  Complete reports that include these types of police responses can be found in the raw spreadsheet files received from the Howard County Police Department.

 

  • Data in the tables and plots below are limited to those police responses that took place between 7:00 AM and 6:00 PM, in an effort to limit the scope of the investigation to approximate “school hours” timeframe. This likely has resulted in the exclusion of police responses to certain incidents of public concern that happened outside of this timeframe, such as before, during or after  school-related sports and social events that took place after 6:00 PM. 

 

  • Approximately 80% of all documented police responses in the categories focused on in this report occurred between 7:00 AM and 6:00 PM. The remaining 20% of incidents were excluded from tabulation due to occurring “outside school hours”.

 

  • Data for the most recent high school, Guilford Park High School, has been excluded from this report. Data from Homewood School and Cedar Lane were also excluded from the totals in this report.

 

  • Certain HCPSS schools may have changed policies towards initiating calls for police responses to certain incidents and student offense categories due to directives from Central Office with the change in Superintendent leadership starting in the 2017-2018 school year, as well as when a subset of HCPSS schools began a “Restorative Justice Cohort” program starting in the 2019-2020 school year.  The schools that implemented this program in 2019 (which may have impacted policies regarding calling for police response) were:  Ilchester ES, Laurel Woods ES, Longfellow ES, Long Reach HS, Mayfield Woods MS, Thunder Hill ES, and Wilde Lake HS.

 

  • Comparison data with the same scope and school hours timeframe is presented for a neighboring county, Carroll County, with data received from the Carroll County Police Department.

 

  • All data presented was collected via Maryland Public Information Act requests sent to the Howard County Police Department and Carroll County Police Department.

 

  • If there are further aspects of this data that you would like HoCo Watchdogs to examine and publish, or if you would like your own analysis of the data considered for publication as a Guest Watchdogs post, please send an email to hocowatchdogs@protonmail.com .

Total Police Responses to HCPSS and CCPS Schools

 

Shown below is a list of all Howard County Police Department responses to HCPSS schools between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2023. This data was obtained from MPIA requests to the Howard County Police Department. All data received from these requests can be found and downloaded here.

HCPSS Elementary School Police Responses 2017-2023 (Alphabetical Order)

HCPSS Elementary School Police Responses 2017-2023 (Sorted by Total, Most-to-Least)

HCPSS Middle School Police Responses 2017-2023 (Alphabetical Order)

HCPSS Middle School Police Responses 2017-2023 (Sorted by Total, Most-to-Least)

HCPSS High School Police Responses 2017-2023 (Alphabetical Order)

HCPSS High School Police Responses 2017-2023 (Sorted by Total, Most-to-Least)

Here is comparative data for Carroll County Public Schools (CCPS) that details Carroll County Police Department responses to CCPS schools between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017:

Carroll County Public Schools Police Responses 2017-2023 (Total and Percentage Compared to HCPSS)

Police Responses Per 1000 Students

Police Responses By Year (Total)

Police Responses By Quarter (Total)

Year-Over-Year Percentage Change in Total Police Responses to Howard County Schools

Year-Over-Year Percentage Change in Total Police Responses to Carroll County Schools

Percentage Difference in Total Annual Police Responses to Howard County Schools Compared to 2017 Data

Percentage Difference in Total Annual Police Responses to Carroll County Schools Compared to 2017 Data

Lockdowns at HCPSS and CCPS Schools

 

Shown below is a list of all full lockdowns and modified lockdowns at HCPSS schools that took place from January 2018 through March 2023.  This data was obtained from the following MPIA request:  https://mpia.hcpss.org/requests/2023-113.

 

According to this Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) request, from January 2018 through March 2023, HCPSS has had 97 modified, full, or combination modified/full lockdowns.  This includes 44 combination modified/full lockdowns, 42 modified lockdowns, and 11 full lockdowns.

 

According to a similar MPIA response sent to Carroll County Public Schools, CCPS has had zero full lockdowns, 19 “Secure” (equivalent to modified lockdown) since 2020, all due to police activity in the surrounding area or due to a dangerous animal such as a bear on the school grounds, and 10 “Holds” related to student or staff medical emergencies.

Here is the full data received from HCPSS Central Office regarding lockdowns at Howard County public schools:

HCPSS Lockdowns (2018)

HCPSS Lockdowns (2019)

HCPSS Lockdowns (2020 – 2021)

HCPSS Lockdowns (2022 – March 2023)

Here are the details received from CCPS Central Office on full lockdowns and modified lockdowns (called “Secure” in CCPS system) at Carroll County public schools:

CCPS Lockdowns (2020 – June 2023)

Police Responses to HCPSS and CCPS Schools (By Type of Offense)

 

Shown below are details of Howard County and Carroll County Police Department responses to HCPSS and CCPS schools between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2023 for specific categories of offenses: 

Police Responses By Year (Assault)

Police Responses By Quarter (Assault)

Police Responses (Assault) to HCPSS High Schools

Police Responses By Year (Child Abuse)

Police Responses By Quarter (Child Abuse)

Police Responses By Year (Child Pornography)

Police Responses By Quarter (Child Pornography)

Police Responses By Year (Controlled Dangerous Substance)

Police Responses By Quarter (Controlled Dangerous Substance)

Police Responses By Year (Disorderly Conduct)

Police Responses By Quarter (Disorderly Conduct)

Police Responses By Year (Fight)

Police Responses By Quarter (Fight)

Police Responses By Year (Harassment)

Police Responses By Quarter (Harassment)

Police Responses By Year (Sexual Offense & Rape)

Police Responses By Quarter (Sexual Offense & Rape)

Police Responses By Year (Suicide Attempt/Threat)

Police Responses By Quarter (Suicide Attempt/Threat)

Police Responses By Year (Theft)

Police Responses By Quarter (Theft)

Police Responses By Quarter (Weapons Violation)

Police Responses By Year (Weapons Violation)

Concluding Thoughts

 

There is a ton of data to sift through and analyze further here.  Please share this data with all whom you feel might be interested but are unaware of this blog.  Are there further aspects of this topic that should be examined?  Do you have your own analysis to add as a separate “Guest Watchdogs” post?  Please email hocowatchdogs@protonmail.com with your thoughts, ideas, questions, and personal research.

Your help is needed to support the operations of HoCo Watchdogs!  If you would like to make a donation towards keeping this website up and running, please contact the author at hocowatchdogs@protonmail.com consider.

 

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