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 Note:  First 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

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

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)

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