Crime up 83 percent, Deen says - Weatherford Democrat

Continuing with an aggressive push in his campaign for county judge, Hudson Oaks mayor Pat Deen said Monday the county’s crime rate has risen by 83 percent since 2013.

The numbers Deen mentioned during a meet and greet at Boo Ray’s restaurant in Hudson Oaks came from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report for 2013-2015 he said.

Deen did not mention his opponent County Judge Mark Riley but his remarks came days after he criticized county leadership for falling behind on maintenance of the county courthouse.

Riley’s response when asked about Deen’s remarks about the crime rate was to refer a reporter to the Parker County Sheriff’s Office.

“You need to contact the sheriff for any information that pertains to his department,” Riley said.

Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said there is “no way” the rate could have gone up by 83 percent in such a short time.

The numbers from the FBI report show that there were 64 violent crimes reported in 2013, 79 violent crimes reported in 2014, and 117 violent crimes reported in 2015, which indicate an 83 percent increase in reported violent crimes in the county, Deen said.

Both the FBI and DPS – which publishes its own Uniform Crime Report using the same statistics – include the following categories under the heading of violent crime in their reports: murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft.

Numbers for 2016 have not been released yet by the FBI, but are expected to come out “any day now,” Deen said.

Deen also mentioned the average response time for county law enforcement – “27 minutes” – and said he had been present at a commissioners court meeting in 2015 when the sheriff’s office asked for additional resources to cut down the response time.

“I was in the court room when the sheriff’s department asked for additional resources. They said, ‘We have a 27-minute response time, and we need to get that down.’ And they didn’t hire anybody. So we continued with the 27-minute response time, and it’s no secret: when there’s a burglary, or some crime of a violent nature, they’re not going to go to [a city] with significant coverage by law enforcement.

“It tends to be more out in the county when things happen. My point was, the county needs the resources necessary to get that crime rate down. At the end of the day, protecting our citizens has to be the number one priority. The outstanding sheriff’s department that we have needs resources to get that down.”

Fowler acknowledged that many law enforcement agencys are understaffed.

“Of course, no sheriff ever has everything he needs. But 85 percent? We’d be under siege if that were true,” the sheriff said. “I can tell you that crime has not gone up by 85 percent... Even if you figured that for eight or 10 years, this ain’t Baltimore.

“My knee jerk on this is, I’m not sure where these numbers came from. But like I said, you’d be under siege if that were true.”

The FBI’s numbers do not match up with the DPS numbers, which themselves “appear to be off,” said Sheriff’s Office Captain Mark Arnett.

The discrepancy could have to do with the department’s switch to a new crime reporting method in 2014, Arnett said.

“In 2014, we went from UCR to IBR (incident-based reporting),” Arnett said. “UCR is the old way of doing it, it was developed by the FBI back in the 40s and 50s. Everyone back then had to codify certain offenses... under UCR, there are a limited number of crimes that are actually codified. Everyone now is migrating to incident-based reporting, which allows us to upgrade our range of reporting on different kinds of crime that was underreported or not reported in the past.

“In 2014, we got a new computer system. When we did that we transferred from a UCR agency to an IBR agency. And I’ve got to tell you, our numbers appear to be way off since we transitioned over. To think that we went from 128 arrests in 2013 to six in 2014 is ridiculous. In 2015, we have 41 arrests. That’s crazy. Just looking at the arrests in our system for aggravated assaults, we had 71 assaults and cleared about a third of those by arrest in 2016.

“So these numbers are off, and we do have a call in to our UCR rep to see what’s going on. In 2014 and 2015, the numbers change drastically... but those numbers aren’t even close to being right.”

Of the FBI’s numbers of reported violent crimes, Arnett said they could be based on a per 100,000 population basis.

“That may be the rate per 100,000,” Arnett said. “But I’m not sure where those numbers are coming from.”

Let's block ads! (Why?)