Crime in the city down 14% and 17% in two recent months... according to "Crime-fighter Godfrey"
By Curmudgeon
Just want to note, briefly, that the Standard-Examiner has three interesting gang crime stories up this morning. Two on the front page, both by Sam Cooper, can be found here and here. The unit is having a significant impact in the central city, community residents are becoming involved in crime control, and crime in the city overall was down 14% and 17% according to the Mayor in two recent months.
And in the Top of Utah section, another story reporting that gangs are moving to the suburbs to escape the increasing heat put on them by urban police gang units. Good news for Ogden, not so good for Clearfield. The story is here.
Of late, the Std-Ex has been doing some good reporting on gangs in Ogden.
Ed. Note: And wasn't it just last Thursday that we openly queried: "Whatever happened to Godfrey's 'zero tolerance policy'?"
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16 comments:
We've heard Mayor Godfrey's statistics before, and here's what we found out the last time Godfrey was spouting crime reduction statistics:
Mayor, you lied
Call me sceptical.
I particularly like Greiner's law that makes it legal to search a parolee's person or home without a warrant.
All in all the news in these articles sounds good to me - the government finally paying attention to one of its legitimate functions and getting the job done.
Curm, I'm supprised you would repeat lying little mattys' crime stat expressed by percentages without a formal statement of having your eyebrow raised. I suspect that if they were correct, it could have something to do with the very late arrival of good weather.
Along the lines of, and if I not mistaken, this 5 person gang taskforce was in place last year. One who nose, (not to be confused with potato nose) expressed in a previous thread that the number of police officers is 130, thats what I recall the number was during the campain. Lying little matty over stated the number by 15, then promised an additional 15 were to be added in January, this for votes was change to read asap. So if the number of police has not changed and these increases were budgeted, where's the money for all these police gone? Icecicles, gondolas, lobbyists or possibly Val Southwick?
Curm: You call this an example of "good reporting"? Since when is it good reporting to uncritically print statistics that have been cherry-picked and hand-delivered by the Godfrey administration? A good reporter would have insisted on seeing a much more complete array of statistics, then given us the big picture rather than a snapshot of a particular month.
Dan:
My comment related to gang crime reporting over the previous several months. And the stories reported comments from community residents who say the new street crime unit is having a noticeable impact. There was more, much more, in the stories than the Mayor's word.
On the statistics: absolutely right that the reporter should have asked where they came from so they could be corroborated. Thought that as I read it, which is why I made a point of saying the numbers were from the Mayor. I suspect they are reasonably accurate since checking crime rates for March 07 and 08 and April 07 and 08 is such an easy thing to do, it would be very foolish to not give them accurately. But I don't know that to be so, and as everyone has noted, and I agree, this is Mayor Godfrey speaking and so everything he claims needs to be checked. Twice. Would that that were not so, and sad that it is so, but clearly it is. Still, those numbers applied to crime overall in the city, and so were but a minor sidebar to the main topic of the SE's story.
That said, the SE has been keeping the gang violence story, broadly considered, a focus for a while now, and that in itself is a public service and a proper thing for a good home town paper to be doing.
Looking at this from a historian's POV, it would not be right to simply assume any story of improvement in crime control in the city must necessarily be false, because it's not possible that could be with Godfrey in office. And I'm afraid that is the assumption some posters occasionally make.
If it is true, as many have suggested, that the Mayor has sold out lock, stock and barrel to the business, development and realtor lobby here in Ogden, I'd point out that it does that group no good to have crime escalating in Ogden. Just the reverse, in fact. And so this may be one area where Godfrey's opponents and the Mayor's supporters share a common interest.
I'm so glad that the mayor has made room in the prison for his buddy Val Southwick. So mayor have val save you a place.
curm:
Even if the statistics are accurate, they could still be misleading in many ways because they're so out of context. I find it remarkable that the Standard-Examiner can do story after story on crime in Ogden, without ever doing a decent job with the statistics.
Dan:
Granted, but that could be said of almost any crime statistics reported in summary in a story... they they "still could be misleading in many ways because they are out of context." If you're calling for a full-fledged SE story on Ogden crime statistics that would go into the numbers, put them in context over time, and draw some conclusions, I'm all for it. But that was not what this story was about. I agree that it should have had a sentence saying "The Mayor said he got those figures from XXXX," so we could all, the SE included, check them out. But you can't do a full fledged analysis of all possible biases in stats every time they're mentioned by some official or candidate and included in a story. Giving the numbers source would have been good, and enough, in this story.
The Mayor claimed the percentage declines. The SE did not report them as fact, but as the Mayor's claims. [The SE newsroom --- or Information Center or whatever they're calling it these days --- still has not apparently acquired the gene that is found in all good newsrooms, the one that makes asking any public official making a claim "oh yeah? What's your source for that, Mayor [Governor, Senator, President]?" They should have asked for his source and didn't. On that we agree. But in this story, I don't think much more than that could or should have been routinely included.
curm:
It seems that you and I have a pretty big disagreement on the responsibility of journalists when it comes to reporting quantitative information fairly and in context.
My position is that journalists should treat quantitative claims just as skeptically as any other factual claims. Rather than reporting these claims in isolation, they should routinely check other sources and provide context. To see what I mean about context, look at the AP story on oil prices on page 9A of Sunday's paper. You would presumably maintain that the text of this article could have stood on its own, without the graphs. But the graphs provide context by showing the history of oil prices and OPEC production.
With Ogden's crime statistics there's the additional complication that credible sources have previously accused the mayor of manipulating the numbers, while the chief of police has accused the Utah BCI, which compiles and reports these statistics, of manipulating them. This situation increases the obligation of journalists to seek out other sources and provide context.
Dan:
I don't think we're as far apart as you think, but I do think you've extended my meaning w-a-y beyond what I said.
The Ogden stories were about the new police unit, how it operates, community policing, and its impact on street crime in Ogden. They went to the mayor for a reaction and he gave them the two numbers. We agree the reporter should have pressed for a source.
But this was not a story about crime rates in Ogden over time, or what goes into measuring that. And the kind of deep analysis you called for, which would be appropriate and even necessary if the story was Ogden crime rates over time, was not necessary in this one. Statistics are so slippery, and so hedged about with qualifiers, context issues, selection criteria, etc. that it would be nearly impossible to include them at all, even brief and telling ones, if a full analysis was required every time.
The oil story was quite another matter, quite another kind of story, and to suggest that my comments mean I oppose the use of charts or graphs or other ways to present statistical data is... well, Dan, silly. I neither said nor implied anything of the kind.
A throw away comment by a politician as an aside in a story required, I think, nothing more than including his source. Which the SE didn't do, but should have.
curm:
Your response makes it clear that we are indeed very far apart on this issue.
In addition to the mayor's "throw away comment", the crime article includes a table of crime statistics, cherry-picked by the Godfrey administration to make themselves look good. (The source is indicated.) So you're quite wrong when you downplay the importance of the statistics in the article.
The oil story was not a story about oil prices or production rates over time, but the AP had the good sense to realize that some historical context would make the numbers in the story more meaningful to readers.
And before calling people silly, you should read what they say more carefully.
Dan:
We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. The "silly" applied to your suggesting that I opposed using graphs, tables and other depictions of statistical data in appropriate stories. I no where suggested that. I merely suggested that it did not seem to me to that an extended examination of the mayor's month by month comparison numbers [which numbers I didn't find in that chart, by the way so I'm still not sure where they came from] was essential for this article. You think it was. On that we disagree.
As for what the chart reports, rape/sex crimes, burglary and drug crimes were up. Other categories were down. And the percentage of arrests & pending cases accounted for by the crime reduction unit were indicated in footnotes. That seems perfectly appropriate for this story. The numbers are there, and the source for those in the chart is given, providing an opportunity for people who believe they were cherry-picked to have at them.
So, again, the only thing I'd have done differently on this story was to have asked Hizzonah where he got the month to month comparisons, and I've checked that source to see if in fact it said what the Mayor claimed it did. Beyond that, I thought the story was a reasonably good one as it stands.
dan s
don't waste your time trying to talk reason with the man. he has more time to waste than anyone i know. this blog chain could go on for thirty more rebuttal and youd still be at the same place with this educated man that cant see the big picture.
hes spent too many years thinking of himself as the instructor rather than as the student. he thinks hes yoda.
disgusted:
Yoda? Naw. Way too recent for me. Now the guy in the Kung Fu tv series who kept calling David Carradine "Grasshopper" maybe....
Curm:
I said: "You would presumably maintain that the text of this article could have stood on its own, without the graphs."
You replied: "...to suggest that my comments mean I oppose the use of charts or graphs or other ways to present statistical data is... well, Dan, silly."
If you can't see how you distorted my statement for the purpose of being able to call it silly, then I'm inclined to agree with "disgusted".
As for checking the source of the crime statistics (namely, the OPD), I know two people who have tried that before and both have been told that OPD doesn't release statistics directly to the public. Those who inquired were instead referred to the state BCI where they found statistics that were in serious disagreement with the mayor's. Where does that leave your argument?
Dan:
First, if I mis-read your piece, please accept my apologies. But I don't see much connection with what I wrote and the question of whether the other article could have run without a graph. You clearly do. Again, if I read more into what you were saying than you intended, I'm sorry. But I did not, Dan, "distort" your statement "for the purpose of being able to call it silly." That implies a conscious intent to distort. I don't do that Dan. Ever. I may mis-read, and I have done that, and I may mistate things, and I have done that too. Sooner or later so will everyone who writes much. But I did not intentionally distort what you wrote in order to make a point.
I trust Dan, that we can disagree on matters at WCF without falling into the trap of questioning each other's motives on those [rare] occasions when we do disagree. And at this point, I will take "disgusted's" advice and end conversation on this.
On the second point: where does that leave my argument? Right where it was. It was important for readers to know the source of the Mayor's claims, and the reporter should have asked. And if the source turned out to be a secret source the press and public cannot see, then that should have been included in the story too. For that particular story, that would have been enough. Again, if you think the SE should do an analysis of Ogden crime stats over time, I'm all in favor. Probably be a very interesting one. But that's not what this story was.
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