With the release of the 2014 Year End Crime Data, the Mayor’s Office claims there has been a “steady reduction in crime,” particularly in “Clay Arsenal, North Meadows, North East, Blue Hills and Upper Albany.”
The Hartford Police Department routinely releases crime stats weekly, not just at the end of the year. Before celebrating or getting cynical, it’s worth knowing what the numbers actually mean.
What these numbers indicate are reports of crimes, so this is more of a comparison of reporting from year-to-year. Have there been fewer rapes, or are fewer victims reporting this already under reported crime? Is larceny (theft, shoplifting) up, or have security at the plaza on Flatbush been more vigilant about nabbing those stealing from the stores?
This data, presented by the Hartford Police Department, shows 824 aggravated assaults during 2014. The Open Data site, however, shows 850. The discrepancies between these two continue when looking at larceny. The Year End Crime Data shows 3701 larcenies; Open Data lists 3680. For robberies, there are 502 reported here, but 496 in Open Data.
Wanting to understand why the numbers did not line up, the Mayor’s Office was asked for an explanation. One of Segarra’s spokespersons said this was due to the ten-day gap between incident and information being entered into Open Data.
That explanation alone does not work though, seeing that the data was released on January 12 — more than ten days since 2014 ended.
Brian J. Foley, Chief of Detectives, had a better explanation. There is a ten-day delay, he said, but cases also change. A crime could be entered into Open Data as a domestic violence incident, but later, it could be found that there was also a sexual assault. This data could change well beyond that ten-day frame. The information released by the HPD, Foley said, is the most accurate.
With that in mind, homicides appear to be down 29.6% from 2011. For more context, there were 55 homicides in 1994, but the rate has not steadily dropped since then, so much as yo-yoed. 2004, 1992, and 1985 are some years in recent memory when the murder rate was lower than it was in 2014. Another way to read that: during the last five mayors’ tenures, each enjoyed at least one year when the murder rate was as low or lower than it was in 2014.
Adult arrests are down 34.6% from 2011; juvenile arrests are down 42.1%. That is, 1087 juvenile arrests in 2011 versus 629 in 2014; for adults, 14,016 in 2011 compared to 9157 in 2014.
