Depends On Whose Ox Is Being Gored

I sit in amazement as I read news stories about how crime rates are falling as if we should be thanking our lucky stars. First of all, I can’t think of a worse way to view crime than to do it through some static statistical lens. Second would be to use the pandemic as a marker or benchmark is wrongheaded. Nobody asks why crime rates are being separated by pre- and post-pandemic. Crime has steadily increased over the past decade, the pandemic notwithstanding. A better marker or benchmark would be pre- and post- War on Cops and the Defund Police movement. Another benchmark might be what was called by criminologists as, the Great Crime Decline of the 1990s. 

During the 1990s is when Broken Windows Policing along with order maintenance strategies was the crime prevention and control model adopted by police agencies all across America. The result was an unprecedented and historic low in crime and violence. Criminal prosecutors and judges got on board and started holding career criminals accountable for their unwanted and anti-social behavior. Citizens actually felt a difference. They were confident that government could actually be effective in making communities safer. Public spaces became livable again.

That all came to a crashing halt when a career criminal named Mike Brown attacked and tried to disarm a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer named Darren Wilson who was left with no other option than to use deadly force to save his own life. This local incident became a flashpoint that captured the nation’s attention. A sinister group masquerading as a civil rights movement was spawned. It was actually a Marxist movement called Black Lives Matter. Riots consumed major urban cities. The policing profession was in the crosshairs. In knee-jerk fashion, politicians and police executives ordered front line officers to “stand down” as rioters looted businesses and wide swaths of retail areas were burned to the ground. That sense of safety and security built up during the great crime decline of the nineties vanished. What was needed from these feckless police executives was courage and a backbone. What we got instead was a capitulation to the cop haters. That was the beginning of a surge in crime and violence to record levels, not the pandemic. 

I just made the case as to why using a January 1st to December 31st comparison or the COVID pandemic to fool people into thinking that crime and violence is dissipating are the wrong benchmarks. Any newspaper or mayor who is trying to convince you that crime incidents are falling is using a manipulation of statistics to fool you. The reality is that people are not safe, not in their homes, schools or other public places and they are justified in their thinking.

Being the end of the year, news stories are appearing that are saying that crime is falling. They are using FBI Uniform Crime statistics to do it. The problem with FBI UCR numbers is that they rely on self-reporting by police agencies. In other words, a burglary can be reported as a theft from dwelling, a strong-armed robbery could be reported as a theft from person. It also doesn’t account for people who haven’t reported a crime where they were the victim because they didn’t think police would investigate it properly or just file a report. My point is that these stats can be unreliable. The next and more important point is that using calendar years for calculating crime is meaningless. Agencies reset the counting every January 1st to zero as if the crime figures from the year before don’t matter or didn’t happen. They simply start at zero. It begs the question as to who came up with that and why? A more meaningful look at crime is to examine it from a continual calendar month to month. In other words, from January 2023 to January 2024, from February 2023 to February 2024 and so on. Then we would get a more accurate look at the trend over a continual period of time, not from zero. This is how businesses look at trends.

The other aspect of reporting that crime is down is that it may be comforting to those who have not been victimized, but it is not if your home was burglarized, or you were carjacked at gunpoint or worse if your friend or family member was sexually assaulted, shot or murdered. A reported drop in crime of 6% doesn’t mean anything to most people or insurance companies who have to cover the loss. Too many people are still being victimized by crime and their quality of life is being altered by it. My tolerance for incidents of crime is zero. No crime is insignificant to me.

Before any city mayor or police executive takes a victory lap for some minuscule drop in violent crime, keep in mind it was not the result of anything you did. De-policing is rampant. There are no pro-active strategies being deployed. How do I know? Police vacancies are at an all-time high. Delays in time responding to calls for service are increasing. This includes for 911 calls. There is no time dedicated to preventive patrols in high-crime areas as police are just trying to keep up going from radio call to radio call. It also causes people to not bother calling after being on hold for an excessive period of time.

Let’s be honest with the public. We are nowhere near getting back to where crime rates were during the crime declines of the nineties and I don’t know that we ever will. It is becoming baked into the pie and part of the urban landscape.

Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of America’s Sheriff LLC, President of Rise Up Wisconsin INC, Board member of the Crime Research Center, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com