Since April 12, the Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office has reported 124 crimes, or roughly 1.5 crimes every day.
The 124 crimes are only those in which the Sheriff's Office was the agency responsible for pressing charges and doesn't include crimes in which they were an assisting agency to other departments.
The majority of the crimes reported in the last 2 months have displayed a shotgun effect similar to that seen in the city of Jamestown - crimes are scattered without a noticeable pattern across the roughly 1,500 square miles that make up Chautauqua County.
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The map above shows Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Dept. calls plotted on a map of Chautauqua County. Calls are fairly evenly spread throughout the county, with the exception of the county’s middle and far west areas.
The Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office also makes up a portion of the Southern Tier Regional Drug Task Force, a group that has been responsible for many narcotics-related arrests in Chautauqua County in recent months.
Mapping the incidents doesn't show any noticeable patterns, although it does shed light on certain areas that have higher arrest rates within the county.
Two areas are noticeable for having few incidents, however.
The area in the county's far western corner has had few incidents, ranging roughly from the outskirts of Ripley through the edges of North Harmony and Busti. The other area is along the county's eastern edge, in the areas between Ellington and Forestville to the Cattaraugus County border.
The area of Hanover near routes 5 and 20 experienced the heaviest concentration of arrests, although many of the reports were the result of lesser crimes such as open container violations. This is not to say that Hanover didn't also have a fair number or reports from more serious crimes including harassment, assault, burglary and larceny. Reports of these more serious crimes presented themselves in slightly more than half of the cases in the Hanover area.
The Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office also reported 11 crimes within the city of Jamestown. The majority of the crimes reported in Jamestown were either drug-related or fraud-related.
Another area with a noticeable amount of crime was the Mayville/Chautauqua area with 16 reports, including four from the Chautauqua County Jail.
Anyone with information regarding any type of criminal activity is asked to contact their local law enforcement agency. For more information about the Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office and the services that they provide, visit www.sheriff.us or call 753-2131.
"The computer age has made us much more effective in our collection and use of information, which in turn makes us more efficient law enforcement officers," said Sheriff Joe Gerace.