CLAYTON • ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch says the county government has a credibility problem right now, and that he doesn’t want a proposal floated last week to combine the city and county’s crime statistics to add to it.
For months, ºüÀêÊÓƵ Police Chief Sam Dotson and County Chief Tim Fitch have lobbied business leaders and the Missouri Highway Patrol, which compiles the state’s statistics for the FBI, to support combining the two jurisdictions’ numbers. Their was sent to the FBI on Monday.
“It’s deceptive, and it’s a misrepresentation of the community,†McCulloch said in an interview at his office Monday. “There is no basis in reality to what they are all saying.â€
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McCulloch argued that counting only the county’s unincorporated areas and the municipalities that the county patrols cuts the rest of the municipalities out of the equation. He said, for example, that four murders in June didn’t appear in county police statistics because the county doesn’t patrol the municipalities where they happened.
McCulloch also believes that elected and appointed officials, including ºüÀêÊÓƵ Mayor Francis Slay and County Executive Charlie A. Dooley, who are leading the discussion, are exaggerating claims of disadvantages the city’s crime rate creates when it comes to competing for jobs or college students.
“We have enough trouble maintaining our credibility in government; we don’t need to add to it by making things up,†he said.
The city police covered a population of 318,667 in 2012, crime statistics say, and the county police 391,243. County officers are primary police for about 40 percent of the county’s residents, including those in unincorporated areas or in municipalities that contract with the department for protection.
“You can’t just wave a magic wand and add 400,000 people to the population as if they live there,†McCulloch said. “It’s manipulating the numbers.â€
Fitch countered that the proposal is in its “information gathering†phase. The FBI might require the county to count the municipalities in its numbers before signing off on the idea, he said.
Both chiefs vowed to continue to keep separate crime statistics publicly available.
Fitch said that if he learns the move would be bad for county residents, he would back out immediately. For example, he said, if the combined crime stats would affect insurance premiums for county residents, he would not support the change.
“I don’t know the answers to these questions until we ask,†he said. “And the idea to shut down and let’s not talk about it at all is not the answer, because then we’re stuck with the status quo.â€
McCulloch said the move would cut the city’s murder rate in half, while increasing the county’s murder rate by 8.5 times.
The proposed change in accounting would have ranked ºüÀêÊÓƵ eighth instead of second when it comes to violent crimes among cities with populations between 500,000 and 999,999 in 2010, the most recent year with complete statistics available, officials said.
Fitch believes the way the crime statistics are counted today is deceptive. ºüÀêÊÓƵ, which is 61 square miles in an all-urban setting, is compared to cities that typically contain suburban or even rural areas with less crime, Fitch said.
“So we are represented by ºüÀêÊÓƵ, which is a completely urban environment … instead of being represented as a region,†Fitch said.
McCulloch said the only way he’d support the idea of combining crime statistics was if the city became a municipality within the county.
“The only legit way to do this is to increase the population, decrease the number of crimes or both,†McCulloch said.
Dotson believes the idea of combining crime stats is a move in that direction.
“It’s not a manipulation of the numbers,†Dotson said. “They don’t lie and they don’t change, but what it does do is paint an accurate picture of the region for those who want to know what’s going on in the region, and not just its urban core.â€
Dotson enlisted University of Missouri-ºüÀêÊÓƵ criminologist Rick Rosenfeld to draft the proposal to the FBI. The plan calls for the revamped numbers to be reflected in the fall 2014 publication of 2013 data.
The proposal says, in part, “It is paramount to confirm that the purpose of publishing combined totals is not to paint a suddenly optimistic picture of crime in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, but a more accurate and less damaging version.â€
The proposal states that some national media outlets unfairly compare cities to each other, even though the FBI advises against that practice because of the different ways in which cities count crimes.
Rosenfeld adds that the move would “allow law enforcement officials to fully focus on the underlying crime problem instead of public relations.â€
