Did you know San Jose residents and business don’t have sufficient information to know if our city is safe?
San Jose frequently quotes CQ Press’s 2008 City Crime Rankings as an indicator of our city’s public safety. In 2008, we were ranked 4th on CQ’s list of “Safest Large Cities in America” (with populations over 500,000) based on the FBI’s “Crime in United States 2007“ data.
CQ Press’ methodology states:
The crimes tracked by the UCR Program include violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault and property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft, also called “Crime Index” offenses; the index is simply the total of the seven main offense categories. The FBI discontinued use of this measure in 2004 because its officials and advisory board of criminologists concluded that the index was no longer a true indicator of crime. ….. The consensus of the FBI and its advisory groups was that the Crime Index no longer served its purpose and that a more meaningful index should be developed.Public safety is consistently ranked as the #1 city budget priority by San Jose’s residents. With that in mind, maintaining our status as the “Safest Big City in America” is still a good goal. But once you looked at why the FBI discontinued its use of the CQ methodology — because it was “no longer a true indicator of crime” — you begin to understand a new measurement is needed.
San Jose’s city administration should not rely on CQ Press’s City Crime Rankings to measure public safety, or set city budget priorities or police staffing levels.
Developing additional, detailed crime comparisons for San Jose and selected large cities in our county and state based on the FBI’s annual “Crime in the United States“ report will provide the Mayor, City Council, residents and businesses with additional information to measure public safety and set police staffing and budget levels.
In addition, there are two public reports that, if published monthly, could assist in police staff and budget allocations and educate everyone about crime and related social issues. The public could then use Community Policing to potentially prevent crimes and also address the social issues that contribute to crime.
Phoenix’s Monthly Count of Actual Offenses Known to Police uses the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) classifications and definitions and is a more comprehensive citywide crime report that what is available in San Jose.
The California Department of Justice’s Adult and Juvenile Criminal Report provides crime and demographic data that could alert city leaders, city administration and residents to potential social or criminal problems such as the drunk-in-public arrest rates. (See Page 2: Misdemeanors - Drunk; Page 4: Adult demographics; Page 6: Juvenile demographics.)
Unfortunately, due to budget shortages, the San Jose Police Department does not have the requested staff or improved technology systems needed to replace it’s decades-old, inefficient manual reports and retrieval system. Either of these would allow SJPD to produce the desired reports I have discussed previously.
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I don't care what numbers you use, if City Hall keeps cutting the public safety budget, crime's going to go up. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteWe have 1300 cops to safeguard a city of one million, and they're doing a tremendous job if you ask me.
Ed,
ReplyDeleteThe truth is we at San Jose Police do not have the capacity to take all the crime reports. We just don't have enough officers. In reality what is happening is a false sence of security. People are not reporting the car burglaries. If the loss is minimal people don't report those home burglaries as well. This information is directly related to the criminals in the state. Once its determined that the city is soft, we will become the victim. Take note of a large retail store in South San Jose. It was the constant target of theft. Once the store decided to prosecute and had a zero tolerance it was only a matter of weeks. Theft got you arrested. This program worked well.