Litter and reports of crime are generally linked in Akron, according to a multi-year study conducted by Keep Akron Beautiful and the Akron Police Department.
“We looked at what we do at Keep Akron Beautiful and what we do in the police department and where we intersect,” said Deputy Police Chief Dave Laughlin. The effort is a part of “a holistic approach” to both reduce crime and clean up the city, he said.
Laughlin is also a board member of Keep Akron Beautiful, a nonprofit focused on improving quality of life in the city “through beautification and responsible environmental management.” The group picks up litter, removes graffiti and plants flowers, among other initiatives, on public land throughout the city, according to its website.
KAB Executive Director Jacqui Ricchiuti said her organization sees “a pattern of areas that probably, over the last three to four years, had been the same. We had a list of illegal dump sites in the city that we serviced quite often – sometimes we’ll go and clean it up and the next day someone has dumped there again. And we would just get the sense when our crews would go into these areas that there was other activity and things going on.”
KAB created a series of maps charting the illegal dump sites and the streets noted for trash in the city. The organization passed that along to the APD, whose employees created “heat maps” that show the density of criminal cases and calls for service.
The crimes mapped include arson, burglary, aggravated burglary, robbery, aggravated trespass, aggravated assault, breaking and entering, criminal damaging, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, felonious assault, murder and rape.
Using 2022 data last year, then 2023 data this year, the combined maps from the two agencies generally matched what the two agencies were seeing on the streets: that litter and crime are generally correlated.
“It’s not surprising to me, as someone who has worked in this space for a long time,” Ricchiuti said. “Where there is litter there is crime, and the areas that feel most safe in our communities are the areas without litter, without graffiti, and the map shows those are the areas with the least amount of crime. … The areas with the most illegal dumping and the most litter is where my crews feel the most unsafe.”
Laughlin said that while there is a general correlation between litter and reports of crimes, there are many other factors at play.
“Nothing really surprised me a lot” about the maps, he said. “The areas that we respond to the most for calls for service, the most crime, have a lot of challenges associated with socio-economic issues, availability of housing, medical care – all those things that overlay on top of each other in the community all seem to drill into certain areas.”
In North Hill, the deputy chief noted, the map shows “there’s a high density of cases in that area, and it aligns with our common dump areas almost one-to-one.”
The map shows correlations between litter and crime in East Akron, Firestone Park, and in areas south of West Market Street in the West Hill, West Akron, Sherbondy Hill and Highland Square areas.
There are common dump areas in generally low-crime spots on the edges of Kenmore and Summit Lake, Laughlin pointed out, because they are “ruralish type areas with spaces for people to find their way to dump a little more inconspicuously.” And downtown, there is more reported crime compared to the reported dump sites due to the density of people and the effort to keep it clean by groups such as the Downtown Akron Partnership, Laughlin said.
“The best part of this is what happens when the litter is removed and people feel more safe in these spaces,” Ricchiuti said. “We see the areas where our crews touch all of this often and remove the litter, those crime rates tend to go down, which is another big piece of that. The mere presence of graffiti or litter in neighborhoods definitely affects a lot of little crimes and certainly big things.”
Keep Akron Beautiful is picking up more trash from city streets than ever before. In 2023, she said, the organization picked up 105.6 tons of litter. In 2024, it had surpassed that mark by July 1.
“The amount of litter being picked up is increasing and increasing, and it’s a struggle to make a dent eradicating the litter in Akron,” Laughlin said. “When you see areas that are clean [and] planted, it just gives you a warm, uplifting, positive feeling, and if we can have that spread more throughout the community, the people are going to be better to their fellow men and women in the community.”
