Duluth's city council has a theory - keep the bars open an hour later and you'll keep the money from flowing over the bridges that connect Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis.

Superior police officers scoff at the idea.

Superior's reputation as a "party town" is nearly as old and well-documented as the city's history. The availability of cheap alcohol and a wide variety of bars and nightclubs in a 10-block area of a 45-square-mile city create a nightlife culture that is far different from Duluth's.

As I talked to Superior police officers trying to gauge the expected impact of a later bar closing time in Duluth on law enforcement in Superior, I discovered most police officers didn't think it would make a difference. The size of Superior's larger-than-average police department has long been attributed to late-night partying and violations committed when alcohol is consumed.

One night shift officer told me that if the police department could close off the bridges at night, about half their problems would go away. Several others on the night shift agreed with him.

I was skeptical.

I read police arrest logs routinely. Simple observation suggests a lot more Superior residents are arrested than Duluth residents.

That's where the computer-assisted reporting techniques that I learned at an IRE and NICAR Boot Camp earlier this year came in.

Addresses are key

Getting the data to answer those questions was the easy part. Department command staffers were willing to accommodate my request.

The database itself was a problem.

The lack of a system expert proved to be the biggest difficulty. The department doesn't have the know-how on staff to retrieve the full body of information. The system expert retired several months before and was never replaced because of budget constraints.

That meant I had to manually enter home addresses of arrestees from reports to find out where Superior's crime problems were coming from. While the data included arrest dates and times, arresting officer, arrest district, incident numbers, the suspect's name and birth date, and charges leveled at the time of arrest, staff had no way of retrieving the data to include the arrestees' home addresses.

The data was provided in text format. I did an initial import into Microsoft Excel 2003 to conduct a visual review of the data to make sure it imported cleanly. From there, I saved it as an Excel file to import into Microsoft Access.

Deadlines limited the number of records that could be updated with the addresses of arrestees, but throughout the input process - every 100 records - I tested the database to determine how much difference there was in the number of arrestees from various communities and states. I saved the query to avoid having to rewrite it each time.

Ready to write

Throughout the gathering process, the difference - the percentage of people arrested coming from various local communities - was fairly small, varying from 0.3 to 1.2 percent at any point in the collection process.

After acquiring home addresses for about 1,800 of more than 2,300 arrest reports, covering a year ending in August, it was time to write. The consistent testing made me comfortable that the data fairly represented the arrestees.

With Access, I looked at the times of day and locations of arrest to determine where and when Superior police had their greatest problems. I looked at the types of charges leveled at the time of arrest. I looked at the home address of arrestees citywide, and then focused on the trouble areas and times, determining the home addresses of people arrested in the entertainment district and where those arrestees were coming from.

I copied and pasted Access query results into an Excel workbook for analysis. I could easily tab through the information as I wrote.

That allowed me to test my query logic without relying on recollection, and in one case, catch an erroneous result. It also allowed me to look at the results to see what was happening and determine what type of graphics would best tell the story.

It also proved handy when it came time to pass along information to the Duluth News-Tribune's one-man graphics department.

Data findings, interviews

The findings substantiated what officers were saying about the draw of Superior's party-town culture and what they observed on patrol.

Superior residents accounted for about 60 percent of all arrests made by the department, but Duluth residents accounted for more arrests made in the entertainment district between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. In that time frame and area, only about 33 percent of people arrested in the entertainment district and 27 percent arrested during those hours actually lived in Superior. Overall, Duluth residents only accounted for about 18 percent of all arrests, but 37 percent of the arrests made in the entertainment district and 40 percent of the arrests made between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.

I was surprised by the results, but when I went back to talk to officers who work the night shift about the problems they deal with, they weren't surprised at all. That was what they expected based on their patrol experience and what they were talking about during earlier discussions.

Since the story ran on Sept. 8, the Superior city council has gotten behind the chief's efforts to create a satellite police office in the city's entertainment district. It's also prompted the chief to look into ways to make people who live outside the community responsible for some of the law enforcement costs they generate and city residents bear.

It has also prompted the chief to seek better training for his records staff so they can look at the information in different ways. It's training that will be useful a year after the new Duluth bar closing time goes into effect and I look back to see if the extended drinking time makes a difference in Superior's law enforcement efforts.

The one finding that really took me by surprise - and the records staff was able to verify - is the number of underage drinking arrests police make. The vast majority of those types of arrests in the entertainment district occur around one nightclub during its "dry" nights, a weekly alcohol-free event.

That's a story for another day.