Recent crime statistics released by the FBI are encouraging for both Vancouver and the nation as a whole. But they are hardly instructive.
According to the bureau’s Crime in the United States report for 2014, which was released Monday, there were about 11 percent fewer reports of property crimes last year in Vancouver when compared with 2013. Combined with other drops in recent years, there were 20 percent fewer property crimes reported last year than in 2010. Reports of violent crime also declined in Vancouver, from 593 in 2013 to 577 last year. Nationally, property crime dropped 4.3 percent from 2013 to 2014, and there was a slight decrease in violent crimes. The Washington Post reported: “2014 was a year of unprecedented safety in the United States.”
While all of that is good news, the release of the report on Sept. 28 also points out a problem in how the nation tracks crime statistics. There’s no telling how the crime rate is changing in 2015, and there will be no telling until a year from now — nearly three-quarters of the way through 2016. As Matt Ford writes for The Atlantic: “Without reliable data on crime and justice, anecdotal evidence dominates the conversation. … These delays, gaps, and weaknesses seem exclusive to federal criminal-justice statistics. The U.S. Department of Labor produces monthly unemployment reports with relative ease. NASA has battalions of satellites devoted to tracking climate change and global temperature variations. The U.S. Department of Transportation even monitors how often airlines are on time. But if you want to know how many people were murdered in American cities last month, good luck.”
In an age of 24/7 media and speed-of-light social media, anecdotal evidence can skew perceptions. With much attention placed upon police brutality in parts of the nation — and with what seemed to be daily news reports of officers being murdered — it becomes difficult for the average citizen to maintain perspective. Even FBI Director James Comey noted in April that it was “ridiculous that I can’t tell you how many people were shot by the police last week, last month, last year.” On the other side of the coin, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 117 officers were killed last year. That marked an increase from 2013, but was lower than every other year since 1959. As for this year, according to The Washington Post, killings of police officers were down 25 percent in the first half of 2015 when compared with 2014. As Christopher Ingraham wrote, “So much for that ‘war on cops.’ ”
