Crime May Be Worse Than It’s Being Reported

The war on cops has created thousands of casualties…

If you've been paying attention, you already know crime has surged in regions across the United States. Some cities, including New York City, Chicago and Milwaukee have especially been hit hard. Even upscale neighborhoods aren't immune. (RELATED: LA Gangs Have a New Hobby – Targeting Wealthy Neighborhoods)

The situation, it turns out, may be worse than even crime statistics reveal. Or in this case, don't reveal.

It's Never Just About Statistics

Statistics can be useful in identifying trends and patterns. They're one-dimensional, however, and never tell the full story. Making decisions solely based on numbers is something a politician or police bureaucrat might do, but it's not good policy.

For one, the law categorizes crimes in broad terms – murder, rape, aggravated assault, burglary and so forth. Crime statistics can't capture the heinousness of the particular assault or the rape or the murder being committed. They don't reveal the brazenness that criminals exhibit because consequences are small-to-non-existent. And they never do justice to the anguish that victims experience. (RELATED: How the FBI and Media Disregard Armed Citizen Responders)

Statistics also can't measure quality of life or regional dynamics. Numbers that show “crime is down” or “aggravated assaults are down” or “shots fired are down” are of little consequence if the types of crimes that have increased are more heinous in nature than they have been in the past. Or if crime is down a couple percentage points from the year prior, but are much higher from a historical perspective.

They also lose their relevance when crime patterns change. Crime that's moved from one place to another doesn't necessarily mean numbers are down. It just means the problem has shifted.

Many of those Best places to live lists use crime statistics as a criterion. Being categorized as a city that's “below the national average for crime” doesn't necessarily mean it's a model of safety. Only by doing a deep dive into historical statistics, looking at the types of crimes occurring and asking long-time residents if their quality of life has changed, does a true picture emerge. (RELATED: Biden's ‘Guns First' Approach to Violent Crime Ignores Basic Facts)

Statistics are only as useful as the people analyzing and interpreting them. Good analysts study patterns, inconsistencies and historical patterns. Without context, statistics can be used to create false or incomplete narratives.

No Officers to Assist on Major Crimes

As early as 2017, I began to notice a troubling downward trend of applicants to the Madison Police Department. In 2012, the MPD received more than 1,508 applicants. By 2017, that number dipped to 574 applicants. Last year? Just 288. It's a trend that has hit police departments across the country. (RELATED: Violent Crime Spike Linked to Defund Police Movement)

As a result, the MPD understandably had begun to work on priority-only status. Crimes like shoplifting, theft, disorderly conduct and non-life-threatening car accidents were taking a back seat to higher-stakes crimes.

By now, many of us have come to understand that a police officer may not be available to answer calls for “lesser” crimes (a “lesser” crime, BTW, doesn't necessarily mean it's victimless). Or if one is dispatched, the wait might be longer than expected.

The Stakes Have Yet Again Been Raised

It's no longer just calls for service for things like larceny, public indecency, noise complaints and fender benders that aren't being answered.

High-priority calls aren't being investigated.

Without examining every city's call for service roster, I have no idea how widespread this problem is. It is, at least, a crisis for the city of Chicago.

The online journal, Wirepoints investigated and analyzed dispatch call records from the Chicago Police Department. The numbers uncover a backlog of priority calls and longer-than-usual wait times.

In part (the bold part is mine),

New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond.

That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021.

High priority calls include Priority Level 1 incidents, which represent “an imminent threat to life, bodily injury, or major property damage/loss,” and Priority Level 2 incidents when “timely police action…has the potential to affect the outcome of an incident.”

The types of crimes Chicago police officers are increasingly unavailable to assist with include shots fired, assaults in progress and domestic batteries.

It's not just Chicago that's unable to dispatch police officers for more serious crimes or to work on crime prevention. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Los Angeles Police Department, for example, is down more than 650 officers from pre-pandemic staffing levels. As a result, it's had to close its animal cruelty unit; and it's downsized its human trafficking, narcotics and homeless outreach teams by 80%.

Crimes that don't make it onto statistics lists are still crimes. People (and animals) are still being victimized even if a perpetrator isn't arrested, indicted or convicted.

As the police staffing crisis continues its downward spiral, rogue prosecutors are unleashing repeat offenders onto the streets. This is deeply troubling. (RELATED: Big City DAs – No Crime Big Enough to Do Time)

The November midterms may offer some relief, but I caution my readers not to treat it as a panacea. We're a nation in crisis. Too much damage has been done to policing. I suspect it will take years for police departments to restore their dwindling ranks to previous levels.

Much of my police advocacy hours in the upcoming months will involve screening candidates running in the midterms. Please give me a holler if you'd like to help follow up with candidates to see if they received the initial query. I will provide lists and scripts. You can reach me at [email protected].

This article originally appeared in For the Blue. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. Republished with permission.

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