Just to kick off this morning's thread, we'll briefly put the spotlight on two Standard-Examiner front page articles, discussing what's become Emerald City's hot campaign issue -- the Ogden City "crime problem." In a nutshell, mayoral candidate Godfrey contends "crime is down" in Ogden, whereas challenger Van Hooser says "crime is up" -- as if Weber County Forum readers didn't already know that.
Having interviewed a University of Utah communications professor about a recent round of campaign fliers that each candidate mailed out this week, Ace Reporter Schwebke's morning article regurgitates gems like this:
The conflicting messages in the two brochures could mystify some voters, said Bryson Morgan, communications director at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics.Readers looking for something substantive to explain the conflicting positions of our two mayoral candidates will find no help in this morning's Schwebke piece, and in fact may want to skip it altogether.
Some voters may tune out the anti-crime messages in both brochures because they are puzzled by the disparity in crime statistics, he said.
However, some may accept claims in the brochures at face value, particularly if they already support Van Hooser or Godfrey, Morgan said.
“It depends on how they view the credibility of a particular candidate.”
The brochures may spur a small percentage of voters to do research to determine if Godfrey and Van Hooser are telling the truth about crime reduction, Morgan said.
For some voters, the litmus test may be a gut feeling regarding whether they feel more safe since Godfrey took office, he said.
It’s risky for a candidate to tell voters crime has gone down — even though that may be true — because of public perception that crime is on the rise everywhere, Morgan said.
Also, it’s common for incumbents to focus on their successes and for challengers to concentrate on their opponents’ failures, he said.
And sadly, the second Victoria Johnson story isn't really very much better. Although Ms. Johnson did interview a WSU statistics course professor, and did at least superficially delve into the actual crime statistics numbers, her article is predicated on what we believe to be a series of false assumptions. In this connection, we incorporate a few paragraphs from today's article:
“I don’t think they’re changing the information that’s there, but because of the sources they choose and the time period they choose, they’re trying to make it most favorable to them,” he said Friday. [Quoting WSU professor Reynolds]The assumption of today's second article is that all the available data is accurate and reliable, but that each candidate has cherry picked, putting forth the data which best supports his and her own position. Whereas Boss Godfrey has chosen Ogden City data representing the full eight years of his term of office, challenger Van Hooser has selected non Ogden City data from the years 2004-06. That's the story, at least.
Ogden’s crime statistics, like those of other municipalities, are available from three sources: the city, the state and the federal government. The ultimate product is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, which was created to “meet a need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation,” according to the bureau’s Web site.
At each level, the criteria of how crimes are defined is different, resulting in slightly different numbers. So the statistics used by both candidates are correct according to their sources, with each candidate claiming his or her source is more reliable.
We at WCF of course already know better, inamuch as we've been the beneficiaries of some very rigorous analysis. And we already know that Ogden City's crime data for the full eight-year period is troublingly inaccurate at best. Even Chief Greiner has implicitly admitted that.
We'll move on today's next topic for now. With luck, perhaps we'll hear more in this thread from the good professor Hutchins, who seems to be the only soul in town who has carefully examined all the available data.
Finally we'll note that we searched this morning's Std-Ex edition front to back, and were unable to find anything about last night's meet the council candidates event. Although Kristen Moulten has a short report in this morning's Salt Lake Tribune, we're sure that our readers would like to hear more from those lumpencitizens who were in attendance.
Have at it gentle readers. Time to let 'er rip.
