Does a full moon trigger more crime?

Recently I have been working with crime data of Philadelphia PA from Jan 1, 2017 to Oct 24, 2022 or 2123 days’ worth of arrest records. During that time 947,952 crimes have been recorded. This morning I decided to break briefly from the list of statistics I have been asked to find to see if there is any truth behind the myth of are more crimes committed on days with full moons. There have been 72 full moons during the period my dataset spans. Here is what I found. On any given day in Philadelphia, across the 27 police station, 447 crimes are recorded. On days with full moons 434 crimes are recorded on average. So I am afraid the myth does not seem to be true, at least in Philadelphia where on days with full moons 12 less crimes tend to be recorded.

While playing with this data I also wanted to check to see if more crime is committed on weekend verse week days. Turns out, no. More crime happens during the week.