Community Post

Surprise: Crime Down in 2008

It has seemed like a worse than usual year here when it comes to crime.  Between the high profile homicides and the burglary spree, I’ve been assuming that the overall level of crime was measurably worse than 2007.

But so far there hasn’t been a quantitative way to prove it.  The police department switched to a new reporting system at the beginning of the year, making detailed crime reporting unavailable to the public until earlier today when they released stats on the first half of 2008.

Numbers for the east precinct show declines in all categories when compared against the first 6 months of 2007:

  • Homicide:  Down 50%
  • Rape: Down 12%
  • Robbery: Down 20%
  • Assaults: Down 30%
  • Burglaries:  Down 4%
  • Theft:  Down 26%
  • Vehicle Theft: Down 35%

 

Note that the change in the reporting systems makes precise year over year comparisons difficult.  But we’ve double checked all the numbers and matched up the boundaries of the old system to that of the new to come up with what we think is accurate to within a few percent.

The big question:  what are we going to do about all of these neighborhood bloggers who have given everyone the wrong impression about crime around here?  

0 thoughts on “Surprise: Crime Down in 2008

  1. You should take a look at the number crunching and analysis JvA did on crime statistics reporting numbers earlier this year:

    http://midbeaconhill.blogspot.com/2008/01/spd-crime-data.htm
    http://midbeaconhill.blogspot.com/2008/03/spd-crime-data-sti
    http://midbeaconhill.blogspot.com/2008/06/seattlegovs-neighb
    http://midbeaconhill.blogspot.com/2008/07/seattle-police-dep
    http://midbeaconhill.blogspot.com/2008/10/jamieson-on-violen

  2. ‘What are we going to do about all of these neighborhood bloggers who have given everyone the wrong impression about crime around here?’

    The fact of the actual events being blogged is what gives some people the impression… It’s like if all that is on the nightly news is a litany of bad news, then people feel like the world is more dangerous. I heard of an experiment with a small safe town in Canada that got access to the national news, after which fearfulness and a seige mentality ensued.

    I’ve been responding all along that generalizations are totally subjective and that we don’t have the real data. If the result of blogging about incidents is neighbors coming together and improving the safety of our community, then we get beyond arguing about ‘how bad’ it is or isn’t. I think some of that has happened. If the response is just to be scared and have a reason to rant, then maybe certain people should not subject themselves to the crime blotter.

    Now we have some numbers. I think we will see a spike in buglaries when the summer numbers come in. The police admitted that. More to the point, what will people actually do to create the community we want to live in.