Unsurprisingly, most of Chapel Hill's noise complaints occur at night, near students
by Anna Fetter
November 10, 2024
photo courtesy of The Daily Tar Heel (April 3, 2022)
November 10, 2024
Chapel Hill, North Carolina is home to around 51,000 permanent residents. That number jumps to about 77,000 people when including the student population. Unsurprisingly, a large and lively student population means that the local police logs may show some trends. From 2010-2024, over 3500 loud noise complaints were recorded by Chapel Hill Police Department. Where were these complaints and when did they occur? Not surprisingly, they occured mainly at night, surrounding party weekends and school celebrations, and near student housing close to Franklin Street.
Many of the noise complaints are clustered near student houses and apartment complexes. Since UNC has its own campus police, Chapel Hill Police typically only go to off campus housing. Click on the markers to see the details of the log from that specific location, including when and where the noise complaint occured. Select the year to see noise complaints by specific dates, like Halloween or a big win against Duke.
The most noise complaints are called in during the first week of classes and Halloweekend. There's notably less noise complaints when students are home for winter or summer break. Select the year to see noise complaints by specific dates, like Halloween or a big win against Duke.
*Dataset includes data from reported from January 1, 2010 to March 31, 2024.
Not so shockingly, most noise complaints occur between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. on weekends. The radial time chart below shows the distribution of noise complaints by time of day. Click on the bar to see how many noise complaints occured within that hour in the police logs.
The top ten dates with the most noise complaints are unshockingly from first and last weeks of classes, big football wins, Saint Patrick's Day, and over Halloweenkends over the years.
| Date | Number of Complaints |
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Below is a table of all the noise complaints recorded by Chapel Hill Police Department from 2010-2024. The table is searchable and sortable by date, time, location, and description of the noise complaint. Click on the column headers to sort the data by that column.
| Date | Time | Location | Description |
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