Right Goal, Wrong Measure

By Ed Rast

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.

National Night Out 2009

By Jim Cogan

The best weapon we have against crime in our City is each other. Community policing relies on community involvement. Whether it’s participating in Neighborhood Watch, joining a neighborhood association or simply picking up the paper when your neighbor is on vacation, San Jose’s neighborhoods offer many models of community involvement that make a difference in keeping us safe.

Normally, I encourage you to support my favorite community policing program, Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers, but I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to participate in another valuable community policing event, National Night Out.

National Night Out is a crime and drug prevention event sponsored nationally by the National Association of Town Watch and co-sponsored locally by the San Jose Police Department. This year marks the 26th annual event, and over 34 million people across the country are expected to participate.

Tuesday evening, August 4, 2009, residents across the country will be taking back their streets. In my neighborhood, we are organizing an ice cream social in a park. A few of us have committed to distribute flyers inviting our neighbors to get together and meet each other. Other neighborhoods have barbeques or extravagant resource fairs, but we have chosen to keep it simple to ensure everyone the opportunity to talk and get to know each other.

Though ours will be a humble outing, we still expect our beat officers and perhaps some of the command staff to attend. We are an official National Night Out celebration and the police department makes every National Night Out event a priority. In fact, I first met San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis at a National Night Out event many years ago.

In order to ensure that the police knew about our event, I called the SJPD Community Services office at (408) 277-4133. They provided me with a lot of helpful information for making our flyers and put me on the list for police visits. They also referred me to this page on the SJPD website for more information.

I am really looking forward to the opportunity to meet my neighbors and talk about how we can improve our community. Please join me in making San Jose a little safer by getting involved and organizing your own National Night Out event on Tuesday evening August 4th.

Jim Cogan is President of Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers.

Nightmare On My Street

By Beat Cop

Part one of a three part series

Picture this...

You are returning home after a long day at work. While driving down your street you discover your garage door is open. “Hmmm, I must have left it open when I left this morning”, you think to yourself. This self talk provides a few moments of comfort as you pull in the driveway.

Scanning the front of the house, you notice the side gate is open. This is not getting any better. A quick phone call to your spouse confirms nobody has been home all day. You walk into the garage and notice the door leading into the house is partially open. Reality sets in. Someone has broken into your home...

The Reality

In our city, with a population of almost 1 million, the San Jose Police Department investigates over 4,000 burglaries a year with only 7 detectives assigned to the burglary unit. Eight consecutive years of cuts to the public safety budget are bound to affect you as a victim of this type of crime.

In 1986, with a population of approximately 700,000, San Jose Police had 13 burglary detectives and a 16-person burglary suppression unit. Since that time, the city has eliminated the entire burglary suppression unit and cut investigators almost in half.

The city projects that by the year 2020 the population will have increased to 1,150,000. More people and more housing will undoubtedly lead to a rise in burglaries. There does not however, seem to be any plan to increase the amount of burglary investigators.

The case load of every burglary detective does not even come close to making a dent in the amount of cases going through the unit. The lack of adequate personnel prevents most burglaries from even being investigated. With the public safety budget getting cut every year, non-violent property crimes receive less attention. Understandably violent crimes continue to take priority with investigators. For the victims of home burglaries, this is of little consolation.

The Good News

On the bright side, SJPD takes great pride in our professionalism. An overly-abundant case load will not make a detective care for your case any less. There does, however, exist the undeniable reality that an impossible workload reduces the time allotted for each incident.

Thankfully, Chief Davis understands our staffing shortfalls and is working with the City Council to staff SJPD at appropriate levels for a city of this size. Until that happens, we will do the best with what we have. As always, call us, we will be there.

As members of your San Jose Police Department, we want to get involved. We want to catch the person or persons responsible just as badly as you do. With your help, and our expertise, we have a good chance.

Most importantly, let us go inside first to make sure no one is still there — this is why we have guns. Once inside, we will start the collection and preservation of evidence for future prosecution. All patrol officers are trained in evidence collection. You are welcome to watch although don’t expect the process to look like an episode of CSI. It’s actually slow and meticulous, not glamorous, but very important.

Finally, we will work with you and your neighbors to offer our expertise in burglary prevention. There are steps members of the community can take to help protect themselves from burglaries and help the police catch the crooks.

Working together, we can reduce the number of burglaries that occur and arrest more of the people responsible for them.

I’ll tell you more about this in future articles.

Proudly serving you,
Your Beat Cop

Working Together for Safety

By Ed Rast

Do you know what constitutes “Community Policing“ and how it reduces crime in San Jose?

The basic principal is to bring our many diverse neighborhoods, residents, and businesses together with their local beat officers to achieve a common goal. Community policing takes the view that police and citizens are co-producers of public safety services, jointly responsible for reducing crime and improving the quality of life in their neighborhoods. To get a better idea, have a look at this.

San Jose is known nationwide for our highly effective community policing programs like: Neighborhood Watch; Personal, Workplace, and Senior Safety; our many Crime Prevention programs; and National Night Out. You can visit the SJPD website to find out more.

Community attitudes toward police and fire officers can significantly affect the quality of public safety, especially in dense downtown, high-crime, and gang-heavy neighborhoods.

Our understaffed police depend heavily on neighbors to report criminal activity and help identify suspicious behavior. Cooperation like this is what gives San Jose a lower crime rate than almost every other large city in America.

Getting to know your local police officers face to face helps you understand their concerns and workload and helps them to understand the diverse people, issues, and concerns of the neighborhood they’re protecting. Misunderstandings occur when people do not reach out or communicate frequently.

Here are some examples of what you, your family, and your neighbors can do to help improve public safety in San Jose while growing the quality of life in your neighborhood:

• • Let your neighborhood police officers know you appreciate their hard work keeping your neighborhood safe.

• • Participate in community policing, including Neighborhood Watch and crime prevention programs.

• • Attend your neighborhood association meeting, where time is often scheduled for residents and neighborhood police to discuss local crime issues and what can be done.

• • Attend National Night Activities on Tuesday, August 4, 2009 (in most neighborhoods) Visit the SJPD website for more information.