What's Up with the Sneakers on the Power lines?

Using GPS and GIS to Debunk an Urban Legend

Drew Evans and Breanna Gamble , Londonderry School , 6003 Jonestown Rd. ,Harrisburg, Pa 17112

 Original Presentation awarded a First Place and Gold Medal  at the 2004 Patriot-News Capital Area Science and Engineering Fair, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

 In this experiment we set out to prove an urban legend to be false. Last summer we saw an article from the newspaper about how York, Pennsylvania, Mayor John Brenner wanted to put an end to the sneakers on the power lines in his town.  He says drug dealers strung pairs of sneakers over power lines to advertise that “drugs are sold here”.  He said that he was working with Med-Ed to have the sneakers cut down by the utility crews.  We both read the article and we both thought it was ridiculous think that drug dealers used sneakers to advertise their location, we thought it may be just kids throwing the sneakers over the power lines for fun. Therefore, in this investigation used crime mapping to disprove the urban legend that sneakers are hung over the power lines by drug dealers. In Tucson, Arizona the police looked into the legend and they found that there is not relationship between where the crime occurs and the sneakers, they say it just another “urban myth”.  Working with Harrisburg Bureau of Police Vice Detectives and neighborhood patrolman we wanted to debunk this urban legend here in Central Pennsylvania.  Using Global Positioning Systems ,Crime Mapping, and Arc View 3.2 GIS software, this experiment may finally prove this  urban legend to be just a myth and not true. Our hypothesis was correct; we did not think their was a link between drug dealers and the sneakers over the power lines. We know this is correct because after mapping the locations of 37   sneakers (in some locations there were more than one sneaker pair) and using GIS applications, this experiment found most of the sneaker locations were between 0.3 - 0.4 miles from the drug dealers. This distance seems too far away for the drug dealers to be using those sneakers. Even the Harrisburg City Vice detectives and police officers agree with our conclusion. In an interview with a Vice detective, the detective said that in the 30 years he has been working as a vice detective and the 1000's of drug dealers he has interview he has never had a drug dealer tell him that they use sneakers over the power lines to advertise. One city patrolman has been working in Harrisburg for the past 9 years, he also has never heard of a drug dealer using sneakers. He also said that growing up in Philadelphia as a kid, he and his friends used to try to throw their old sneakers over the power lines to get rid of them in order to get a new pair. This experiment could be conducted in other cities like York, PA or other larger cities.  Also, we could somehow prove that it is really kids just throwing the sneakers over the power lines. Finally, a comparison could be done between sneaker locations in the city and any found in the suburban areas.

Map of GIS Analysis of Sneaker Location within a 0.5 Mile Radius of Drug Bust Locations. Students used the Theme Buffering Tool in ArcView 3.2 to create the 0.5 Mile radius ( with 0.1 Mile intervals with in the radius) from each Drug location.

Map of 37 Locations of "Sneakers over the Power Lines"  in the City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

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