# Municipal context and locality comparisons

The Sheriff identifies nine contract cities: Del Mar, Encinitas, Imperial Beach, Lemon Grove, Poway, San Marcos, Santee, Solana Beach and Vista. It also provides law-enforcement services in unincorporated areas. This coverage is not equivalent to every municipality in San Diego County. [Sheriff: About Us](https://www.sdsheriff.gov/bureaus/about-us). The agency's April 2022 contract-renewal announcement documents these nine cities during the analysis period. [Sheriff: contract renewals](https://www.sdsheriff.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1175/16).

The linked CSV extracts the nine municipalities' 2020 Census populations from the official Census TIGERweb table. Vista has 98,381 residents; San Marcos has 94,833. Their similar population sizes do not, by themselves, explain the large difference in the supplied record totals. This observation does not establish a difference in crime risk: city labels, agency participation, policing activity, detention processing and recorded-location meanings have not been harmonized. [Census: California incorporated places, 2020 population](https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerwebmain/Files/acs26/tigerweb_acs26_incplace_2020_tab20_ca.html).

No arrest or crime rates are calculated from these populations. A single 2020 municipal population is neither a yearly population series nor a denominator for an ambiguous administrative locality label. Station jurisdictions may include unincorporated areas. The Sheriff documents this explicitly for the [Vista station](https://www.sdsheriff.gov/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/46/61?fsiteid=1) and [San Marcos station](https://www.sdsheriff.gov/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/40/61).

`acquire_context.py` reproduces the Census extraction; `source_metadata.json` records the downloaded source hash. Sheriff webpage citations were verified through official search results; direct HTTP retrieval was denied and no local copy is claimed. No agency confirmation of the arrest export's location fields has been received.