With staff and participant safety as a major concern, the HANDLS team researched each neighborhood, reviewed the crime statistics, and followed local news events for every neighborhood in which we deployed the MRVs. In addition, we considered the seasonal variations in the types and volume of crime as we planned the months to visit each neighborhood. Thus, neighborhoods with high crime rates in summer were visited in the winter months and vice versa. However, the seasonal deployments became a barrier in some neighborhoods where the residents were away during the summer and the recruitment from these neighborhoods was lower than anticipated.
