Public Safety Incident Data
Overview
This section analyzes incident-level data logged by El Cerrito’s public safety departments – what gets called in, where it happens, and how quickly it’s handled. Unlike the Public Safety section, which covers department organization, staffing, and budget, this section works directly from the underlying incident records themselves.
Police
A full analysis of every police incident logged from January 2019 through June 2026 – seven fiscal years of records. It covers what officers actually spend their time on, how crime reports and parking enforcement have changed, where activity concentrates geographically, activity on the Ohlone Greenway, how quickly the department responds, and seasonal patterns by month, day, and hour. Includes a detailed technical appendix documenting how the underlying dataset was built, cleaned, and verified, including several real data-quality issues that were found and corrected along the way.
Fire
An analysis of El Cerrito Fire Department incident records from January 2017 through April 2025, with a look at the newer 2025 and 2026 records. It covers calls by station, how long it takes the first fire truck to arrive in El Cerrito and Kensington, mutual aid with Richmond and Albany, station workload, and trends and seasonal patterns. Data shortcomings are flagged next to the numbers they affect, and a data issues log documents every problem found in the records, with the Fire Department’s explanations where given.