Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Decline in Crime
One hesitates to shout this too loudly, in fear of evoking a curse,** but 2010 was a better year than the year before for public safety in Lakewood, Washington. Of course, any crime is bad, particularly if you suffered one. I'm sorry if you did. This post is about numbers and trends.
Read through the slides below, but here's what jumped up at me:
* Violent crime was down 11 percent from 2009 to 2010. When you consider what our police department went through in November 2009, this is truly remarkable and inspiring.
* Property crime was down nearly 15 percent.
* Domestic violence reporters were down 7 percent, which is tribute to a lot of people in nonprofit agencies, at JBLM, here in the city, and throughout the community, as well as of course the police.
* Various kinds of fraud were up 35 percent or more.
I'm glad the city produces these numbers. It would be nice to turn them into action as the council conducts public policy. Sadly, our city council, unlike most governing bodies of our size around the state, does not have a public safety committee of council members. We don't usually talk about these numbers. So the data sort of ends here. However, it's good to know this stuff and if you do talk to people around town about public safety, it's good to have numbers to back up the conversation.
** You think I'm kidding about the curse. The fact that Lakewood had no reported murders in 2010, which is wonderful, was page one news; and then we immediately had a homicide. That's why you didn't read me making any reference to homicides above ...
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Read through the slides below, but here's what jumped up at me:
* Violent crime was down 11 percent from 2009 to 2010. When you consider what our police department went through in November 2009, this is truly remarkable and inspiring.
* Property crime was down nearly 15 percent.
* Domestic violence reporters were down 7 percent, which is tribute to a lot of people in nonprofit agencies, at JBLM, here in the city, and throughout the community, as well as of course the police.
* Various kinds of fraud were up 35 percent or more.
Lakewood WA Crime Stats Dec. 2010
View more presentations from Walter Neary.
I'm glad the city produces these numbers. It would be nice to turn them into action as the council conducts public policy. Sadly, our city council, unlike most governing bodies of our size around the state, does not have a public safety committee of council members. We don't usually talk about these numbers. So the data sort of ends here. However, it's good to know this stuff and if you do talk to people around town about public safety, it's good to have numbers to back up the conversation.
** You think I'm kidding about the curse. The fact that Lakewood had no reported murders in 2010, which is wonderful, was page one news; and then we immediately had a homicide. That's why you didn't read me making any reference to homicides above ...
