Address Accuracy

The following is my understanding of addresses and place names from talking to CHPD.

Addresses or place names are assigned to incidents and arrests by dispatch and can be updated by the officer.

If the incident or arrest address is an actual address, then it is typically the closest address where the arrest actually took place. The arrest address does not default to the incident address and these would typically only be the same if the person was arrested where the incident took place. The person's declared address of residence is not in this arrest address data, but would have to be dug out of the police reports. The CHPD does not record in an arrest or incident whether a person was inside or outside a building. Nor do they necessarily record whether the person was a resident of the dwelling where the arrest took place.

Address vs. Placename

An Address is *typically* a house or building number + street direction + street name + street type. This is certainly the case in almost every entry in the county's GIS records. However, this is not the case in the police incident and arrest records where you might see "100 W ROSEMARY ST" or "HOMESTEAD PARK" or "TOWN OF CHAPEL HILL" or even "IRAQ".

A Place is one or more addresses for one facility or logical location. The Freedom House drug detoxification and rehabilitation center is one place which has seven addresses on New Stateside Drive. You can use the Raw Data->Places menu item to search for these. Enter a place of FREEDOM HOUSE to see this example. The county assigned place names were used by default, but many times these were problematic or not present. For example, every public housing location had the exact same name: CHAPEL HILL HOUSING, so I had to rename them to be more specific. Also, University Mall, many schools, and well known institutions did not (or still don't) have place names.

PLEASE NOTE: Some place names are misleading because there may be 10 entities at the same address and this site uses the very first name it finds for an address as the place name.

See the FAQ entries on Address Matching Challenges and Place Matching Challenges in the About the Data category for more information on address challenges.