Crime in Springfield: A deeper look at the stats

With a dozen deaths in less than two weeks, it feels like crime is all anyone is talking about. Understandably, many folks may be asking: Just how bad have things become?

After more than a decade of writing about Springfield-area crime, off and on, I don't have an easy answer. Is crime getting worse? Reports of serious violent crime certainly are more common, doubling in the past decade. And the number of property crimes reported make Springfield stick out like a sore thumb compared to other cities in the country.

But is Springfield as dangerous as some of the lists circulating online would have you believe? Almost certainly not.

Many of those reports misrepresent or oversimplify the crime problems we do have, giving the city a black eye in the public sphere while muddying the waters when a community conversation is needed.

"It's always damaging when inaccurate or incomplete information is provided that has no context," said Matt Morrow, who took over as president of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce late last year. "That's not to indicate that there aren't real issues and challenges that we need to have conversations about … But that has to be a fact-based conversation."

That fact-based conversation gets complicated, especially when you start talking about the crime statistics recorded as part of the FBI's Uniform Crime Report program.

UCR numbers, which are submitted to the FBI by law enforcement agencies across the country, track a variety of crimes along with other information about law enforcement activity.

The Part I or index crimes are the most commonly discussed and include the violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, as well as property crimes including burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft. (Arson also is tracked as a Part I crime but typically isn't included when calculating crime totals or rates by population).

Local police and the FBI strongly discourage using UCR stats to compare one city to another — for good reasons — cautioning that the statistics are not an accurate measure of relative safety or the effectiveness of local law enforcement. But that hasn't stopped various blogs and Internet news sites from putting together lists that purport to rank the "most dangerous" cities in the country.

Springfield ended up at or near the top of a couple of these lists last year, and I've written past columns taking the authors to task for confusing or misrepresenting the numbers.

That doesn't mean I don't think UCR numbers have a use — they do, if you keep in mind the limitations.

"It doesn't matter if we're on the top of the good list or the top of the bad list, it's not accurate all by itself," Police Chief Paul Williams said, before summing up my own thoughts on the matter: "It's a baseline for discussion, not the beginning and ending of the discussion."

One crime is not (necessarily) like another

So let's start that discussion by addressing the elephant in the room: On paper, Springfield doesn't look so hot, especially when you ignore the FBI's warning and compare Springfield's crime rate to other cities.

Using the latest nationwide data from 2013, the number of violent crimes reported per 1,000 residents put us in the No. 6 position among similarly-sized cities. Our property crime rate clocked in at No. 2. Combine the two and we end up at the top of the list.

What does that mean? Factually and with certainty, just this: Springfield police recorded a higher number of Part I crimes per capita than other cities with similarly-sized populations.

Where many of the online rankings go wrong is jumping to the conclusion that reported crime translates directly into increased risk of becoming a crime victim. Of course, some don't even get that much right, either misrepresenting the numbers they use (using property crime stats to calculate "danger," for example) or leaving information out of their comparisons without making the omission clear.

The other reason law enforcement types caution against comparing one city to another is that there's no way to be sure you're comparing apples to apples. Although the name of the program would indicate agencies are reporting crime uniformly, that's not necessarily the case.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that in 2010, about 42 percent of serious violent crimes and about 60 percent of property crimes went unreported. Springfield residents might be more (or less) likely to notify police of crimes, which could skew the numbers.

Springfield police have been recognized by the FBI in the past for their accuracy in reporting UCR crimes, but there's evidence to suggest not all police departments are as conscientious.

Police administrators in Chicago, for example, have been accused of systematically underreporting many of the crimes tracked by the UCR program, fueling a steep decline in that city's crime rate. An audit by the city's inspector general last year found that Chicago police underreported some violent crimes by as much as 24 percent based on a sample of 2012 assaults reports that were reviewed.

Population and geography also matter — a lot. More densely populated urban areas tend to have a higher concentration of reported crime per capita.

Expand beyond city limits to consider the entire Springfield Metropolitan Service Area (encompassing Christian, Dallas, Greene, Polk, and Webster counties) and the rate of reported crime per capita is cut in half. Browsing through the stats for other metro areas reported in 2013, I found that the Springfield metro area's numbers are still higher than some, but not nearly as remarkable as the city's alone.

If Springfield leaders wanted to reduce the crime rate overnight, all they'd have to do is annex a few hundred acres of residential subdivisions. In fact, Springfield's annexation practices may have contributed to the city's relatively high ratio of crime per capita. With sales tax making up the bulk of general revenue, the city likes to annex new commercial developments. Those same retail centers increase the potential for theft and other property crime without adding to the population. Residential developments that might balance out the equation often are left outside the city's borders.

(Note to city officials: I'm not actually suggesting we combat crime through annexation).

"New normal" not all bad news

With so many limitations and uncertainties, how can we best use the UCR statistics to guide a conversation about crime? As Williams said: "Compare us to us."

With little difference year to year in geography, demographics or reporting standards, Springfield's UCR numbers can be a reliable measure of local experience, although they don't tell us much about things like poverty and drug use that can factor significantly into crime.

And while some of the local trends are cause for concern, it's not been all bad news.

The increase in violent crime is perhaps the most striking, increasing from not quite 6 incidents per 1,000 people in 2005 to almost 12 per 1,000 residents in 2014. Aggravated assaults made up the majority of those reports (1,290 in 2014), followed by robberies (390), rapes (265) and murders (16, according to the way the FBI tracks them).

"We have to accept that we're bigger and there's more going on," Williams said, calling the higher rates seen in the past five years "the new normal."

Still, he noted that the city sees very few random attacks — most involve suspects and victims with some sort of pre-existing relationship. "It's not people being randomly shot or stabbed or killed."

Increasingly, domestic violence is being identified as a contributing factor.

"Over 50 percent of all of our assaults are domestic-related," Williams said. The department for the past few years has been working to educate officers and partner with community organizations to address domestic violence issues and "try to get people out of those situations."

The number of reported rapes is worth special mention. The FBI changed its definition of rape in 2013 to include a wider variety of sexual assaults rather than only attacks that involved force and female victims. The number of reported rapes in Springfield doubled after the change, before declining about 5 percent in 2014. Some states have continued to use the older, more limited definition, however, making any comparison between local rates and those elsewhere even more problematic than usual.

Williams said he's glad for the change, which provides a more accurate view of sexual assault.

"It's not that we weren't tracking those before, they just weren't being reported (to the UCR) in this form," he said. "Now we have a benchmark. … and it is still way too many."

One silver lining when it comes to violent crime — despite the increasing caseload (police staffing hasn't changed much in a decade) investigators are clearing a higher percentage of violent crimes. The clearance rate for reported violent crimes was about 58 percent in 2014, up from about 44 percent in 2010.

The clearance rate for property crimes also improved, to about 28 percent. But the bigger success has been the reduction in burglary and theft cases, both of which declined to the lowest level in a decade.

Williams attributes the improvement to concentrated education efforts — seriously, people, lock your doors and don't leave wallets and purses in cars — as well as increased enforcement targeting aimed at putting prolific offenders behind bars.

Burglaries alone dropped more than 21 percent while gas drive-offs (part of the larceny-theft category) dropped 32 percent after the department persuaded Kum & Go to start requiring customers to prepay at the pump. Shoplifting and motor vehicle thefts, both of which increased, will be a focus this year, he said.

Combined, burglary and larceny-theft account for about three quarters of the Part I crimes included in the UCR, so the reductions had a big impact on the city's overall numbers. Despite a 5 percent increase in reported violent crime, total reported crime dropped 12 percent for the year.

Based on the way the FBI estimates population, Springfield's per capita crime rate dropped significantly, which could lead to a relative drop when data for other cities is released later this year. (Since the FBI hasn't released its 2014 UCR report, I calculated an estimated 2014 population for Springfield myself, using the FBI's formula).

If we're lucky, the decline may be enough to keep us off any "most dangerous" lists in 2015. Whatever the case, I hope Springfield residents can have some meaningful, fact-based conversations about the crime in our community.

And please, go check your car doors.