Crime is down in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
For those of us still suffering from the whiplash of fear-mongering election advertisements, that might come as a surprise. But Monday, in part spurred by the victory of Megan Green in the race for president of the Board of Aldermen, I checked the year-to-date crime statistics from the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Metropolitan Police Department.
As of the end of October, slightly, compared with last year. The numbers change almost every day, but if the trend continues over the next month and a half, homicides will remain fairly stable two years in a row, near pre-pandemic averages.
Rapes are down. Robberies are down. Drug crimes are down.
Other than a spike in auto thefts spurred by the massive number of Kia and Hyundai cars that have been targeted because of a design flaw, nearly every major crime category is down year-over-year in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
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That’s not the message Green’s critics pushed in the election. It’s not the message that seems prevalent in some media circles. But in a city that has always had high crime — and whose numbers are skewed nationally because of the separation of the city and the county — the fact that crime numbers are mostly down has to mean something. So does the fact that a tough-on-crime, hire-more-cops message failed at the ballot box again.
Perhaps voters in the city are more interested in real solutions than fear-mongering. Perhaps they realize that every city in America is struggling to hire police officers, just as many are struggling to hire teachers, and restaurants are struggling to find servers.
There’s a reason Gov. Mike Parson recently announced a new to recruit people to attend police academies in the state. Hiring police officers is a national problem that has nothing to do with red states and blue states, or progressive policies vs. conservative ones.
It’s worth noting that the crime fear-mongering failed on a national scale during last week’s election, too. Here’s how former Washington Post columnist Radley Balko put it in his analysis of election results:
“Despite the right’s best efforts to scare the hell out of everyone, crime doesn’t appear to have been much of an issue of all.â€
that Associated Press exit polling showed just 8% of voters cited crime as an issue that motivated them. That doesn’t mean people who experience crime don’t have legitimate fears. Crime in the city is real. Just last month, a colleague had her car stolen from our work parking lot at night while several of us were in the office. A city sheriff’s deputy was carjacked last month. Those are painful events that impact lives.
But the attempts by Republicans, and some Democrats, to blame “rising†crime on various progressive policies didn’t work this time.
“It appears that people weren’t responding to the political chatter about crime,†says .
Rosenfeld’s recent research shows that ºüÀêÊÓƵ isn’t an anomaly. Since the pandemic caused a well-reported rise in homicides throughout the country, Rosenfeld and some of his colleagues have been tracking crime statistics in about 80 cities.
Last year, ºüÀêÊÓƵ’ drop in homicides to pre-pandemic levels was unusual. But this year, Rosenfeld and his colleagues are finding homicides dropping in most major American cities.
The rise that some of those cities are showing in property crimes might be related more to inflation than any specific policing measure, Rosenfeld believes. And there is no correlation, his research has shown, between crime increases and the policies of progressive prosecutors.
Last week, voters apparently sensed what researchers are seeing in the actual numbers: crime is, for the most part, dropping in 2022. And for a city like ºüÀêÊÓƵ, that’s a good thing.
The key now is to figure out how much of that might be due to specific strategies. For instance, earlier this year, Rosenfeld studied the use of violence interrupters in various neighborhoods in ºüÀêÊÓƵ — like the Cure Violence program — and didn’t find a direct correlation to the drop in homicides. He’ll be studying the numbers again when they are final this year. The city has also commissioned a study.
Rosenfeld will also be interested to see how the city police department’s focused deterrence program is working, as well as the “Cops and Clinicians†program, where mental health workers respond to some calls with police officers to reduce the chance for violence.
Two straight years of a drop — or even relative stability — in homicide numbers offers policymakers a chance to learn from the research and map out a crime-fighting plan that has a chance at sustained success.
The data matters, Rosenfeld says. Voters apparently agree.