Three Years of Data, One Snapshot: Police Calls Before, During, and After an Emergency Shelter in Rock Island

Reliable data is essential for sound policy decisions. Police call data from Rock Island now spans three distinct periods: before, during, and after the operation of the emergency overflow shelter.

January, February, and March provide the most consistent basis for comparison. These months are fully captured in each year and are not affected by partial reporting, making them the most reliable for year-over-year analysis.

What the data shows

Across all three months, total calls for service in 2025—the year the shelter operated in Rock Island—were lower than in 2024, the year before.

Totals in 2026, after the shelter relocated to Moline, were higher in Rock Island in February and March than they were in 2025.

Combined total calls for Rock Island were lowest the year the emergency shelter operated in Rock Island. The differences across the three years are small and represent year-over-year variation of less than five percent.

Limitations of the data

The data released by the Rock Island Police Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request is citywide only. The figures are not broken down by neighborhood, address, or geographic area, and they are not categorized by call type or incident code.

This means the data cannot answer more specific questions, such as whether calls in any particular part of the city changed during the shelter’s operating season, or whether the mix of incident types shifted in any meaningful way. The numbers describe the overall volume of police activity in Rock Island, and nothing more granular than that.

A path forward

To make informed decisions about emergency shelter operations and other community services, city leadership benefits from data that is both geographically specific and categorized by incident type. Maintaining and publishing calls for service broken down by location and call type would allow Rock Island officials, service providers, and the public to understand not only how much police activity is occurring, but where it is occurring and what kinds of incidents are involved.

With that level of detail, future conversations about emergency shelters and other policy questions facing the city can be grounded in evidence that reflects the realities of specific neighborhoods and specific kinds of community needs.

For now, the citywide totals are the data we have, and they offer a useful starting point: a complete before, during, and after snapshot of police activity in Rock Island across the months an emergency shelter operated in the community.

Source: Rock Island Police Department, Freedom of Information Act Response