NUMBERS DO LIE

  Most folks put a lotta faith in numbers. How many poor souls are out of work? Who's ahead in the election polls? What's the favorite toilet paper? And, what's the crime rate? I can't vouch for the the other numbers but I can the crime rate stuff. It's pure bull hockey. Or at least it used to be.

  In the early 60's the FBI decided that all police agencies--not just them--should keep track of certain crimes and send the results, annually, to J Edgar's boy's. It was voluntary and most agencies saw it as a giant pain in the keester, and worse, a way to keep track of how successful they really were at suppressing crime. So most departments didn't comply until they were forced to, and then started using inventive methods of keeping track of crimes and rate of clearance.

 Since an increase in crime might cause a Chief to start packing his suitcase, it was tempting to just not count some crimes. One agency in Lee County didn't count bicycle thefts for years. There were too many of them. Would drive the larceny rate over the top.

  Some marked the crimes down, so the "important" ones didn't grow too quickly. An armed robbery would become a simple theft, and so forth.

  Another trick was to mark crimes as solved that were still on the books. Once an Investigator at the Sheriff's Office, when a notorious burglar died, cleared every outstanding burglary on the books. The thinking was it would make them look good on the annual report and the deceased sure as hell wasn't going to hand them up.

 An embarrassing problem arose when the NPD caught another prolific burglar who admitted to the ones he'd done in the City, plus those he'd done in the County. All of which had been cleared off the books by the Investigator with an eraser and blamed on the dead guy.

  I'm sure they're more honest today but I still don't put much stock in the numbers. Why? The percentage thing, for one. If you're a small town, one burglar can ruin the crime rate. Say you average 50 B&E's a year and a good burglar comes to town. Hell, he can knock out 50 by himself causing  a 100% increase in burglaries. And a Chief looking for a suitcase.

  And too many things impact the crime rate, the cops being low on the list. Once the NYPD pulled all the Cops out of one sector and put them in another, doubling the force in the second. The crime rate changed in neither.
 Putting away career criminals is the best way to control crime. There are just a few A-holes out there doing the majority of the crimes. When they are in prison, the numbers show it. We are very lucky, in Collier County, to have one of the best Cops around for busting career criminals. His name is Meade Holland. And the local crime rate shows it.

 So, if you feel safe--and you should here--your Cops are doing a good job. Don't worry about what you hear on the news.