Connally says crime reports for the first six months of the year were up 7%, but in the second half of last year, total crime reports were down by nearly 3%. He says this is true in many individual crime categories as well.
There were 11,405 crimes reported, compared to 11,172 in 2015, according to the St. Joseph Police Department’s annual crime analysis report.
Roberies, rapes and aggravated assaults were up, but arsons, burglaries and stealing reports were down. Moter vehicle thefts went up from 486 in 2015 to 612 last year.
Total violent crime was down slightly, while total non-violent crime reports increased.
There were seven murders reported last year, which is the same number as was reported a year earlier.
Chief Connally says his officers only worked one fatality traffic accident last year, which he called the lowest level in a decade and a half.
Connally is careful to point out that these statistics don’t tell the whole story.
“Any time that we’re talking about crime statistics, any time we’re talking about any of these numbers, we do need to remember that these numbers represent somebody in our community, somebody who has experienced a loss,” Chief Connally said. “I don’t like to sound too casual when we discuss these things because each and every one of these crimes that are reported represents somebody who in some way, whether it’s property or injury or in some way has experienced a negative consequence.”
Connally says his department is about to change the way it analyzes crime data.
“What will be interesting is, at some point this year, we’re going look at switching over to the National Incident-Based Reporting system,” he says. “We’ll have to work on normalizing some of the numbers.”
“It’s really just another way of looking at it.”
The current system treats as one crime an incident that might involve several separate criminal acts. For instance, a robbery and murder would be counted as a murder. Thus, Connally acknowledges, some of those combination crimes might be under-reported. The NIBRS system counts each crime separately.
“When it comes to reports to the police, everything’s under-reported, except probably murder,” Connally said.
“If you look at crime victimization studies, you’ll find there’s a lot higher numbers there, in some cases over a third higher in a lot of categories.”