Students often call police about peers' parties

Brian Charlton and Don Jordan of The State News at Michigan State University analyzed noise and party violations from 2004 and 2005, including 1,025 noise, 41 unlawful party and two nuisance party violations, and found student neighborhoods were saturated with violations. The most ticketed areas were student apartment complexes, a finding that surprised police who thought most complaints would come from where student neighborhoods adjoined areas where more permanent residents lived. "Most of the noise citations are given out after someone calls police with a complaint. There were more than 1,600 complaints in both 2004 and 2005 — three times more than the number of citations handed out." The investigation used Access to find the noisiest apartment complex, apartment, street, block, weekend, day of the week, time of the day, month of the year. They also found the police officers who issued the most tickets. The story includes an interactive map of violations and a PDF of the data.