Crime rate story
By Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer
SAN BERNARDINO -- CQ Press rates the city as the 36th most crime-afflicted burg in the United States, based on an analysis of 2007 crime data.
That's something of a step down from the last batch of rankings, when San Bernardino took 42nd place. But it's still better than the rankings that the city recorded a few years ago.
In 2005, San Bernardino occupied 18th place on the list, which was then published by Morgan Quitno Press. Things were worse in 2004, when San Bernardino was mired in 16th place.
The new data was released on Monday. CQ Press used FBI figures on six crimes -- murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft -- for its calculations.
Although crime statistics for 2008 are not included in CQ Press' current batch of rankings, San Bernardino police report that homicides and other serious crimes are on the decline this year.
Departmental statistics -- current through October -- that show year-over-year declines in seven key crime categories. However, John Law and Joe Public alike have yet to see how the national economic decline may affect overall crime rates in San Bernardino and other cities.
"2007 wasn't a great really a great year for us on impacting crime, (but) we didn't lost much ground," said Jim Morris, chief of staff to Mayor Pat Morris.
"2008 is getting some good results," he said later. "We continue to beef up the presence of police in the street."
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Police say lethal violence has declined in San Bernardino over the course of 2008.
In terms of homicides, police Capt. Scott Paterson said the city has recorded 31 murders this year, as well as three additional homicides that were not classified as murders.
At the same point in 2007, San Bernardino registered 42 murders. There were 11 other homicides that were not recorded as murders, including five incidents when police used deadly force.
Paterson and Cal State San Bernardino criminologist Larry Gaines both allowed that the economic downturn could result in an uptick in crime.
"Generally, when you see unemployment rates go up, crime goes up, but that's only one of a number of factors," said Gaines, who is the chairman of the criminal justice department at Cal State San Bernardino.
To compile national rankings CQ Press of Washington D.C. ranked 385 American cities, finding New Orleans to be the most crime ridden in the nation. The safest city in CQ Press' rankings is Ramapo, N.Y.
The list is not accorded complete respect within the law enforcement field. The FBI publishes annual crime statistics but generally discourages ranking cities.
In the Bureau's view, rankings can lead to "simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents."
Like the FBI, Gaines said the rankings don't account for the wide range of factors within cities that academics and police can use to study why crimes occur within individual jurisdictions.
CQ Press' position is that their rankings allow for comparisons between cities and states and are a way to track year-to-year crime trends.
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Andrew Edwards. E-mail Andrew here.
Somehow this does not strike me as good news, out of how many thousands of cities in the US, we managed to come in the 36th highest. This does not strike me as grounds for celebration !!