Regular as clock work, and on the eve of a pivotal Ogden City municipal election, wherein control of the majority of Ogden City Council seats is up for grabs, the Standard-Examiner comes through with another Godfrey administration tout piece, announcing once again that Boss Godfrey has his hands firmly placed on all the right levers and dials, making Ogden City one of the most crime-free towns in the Beehive State. Most of this stuff comes straight out of the mouth of Boss Godfrey of course, so as all WCF readers know, it has to be all true:
• FBI says Ogden crime stats downGodfrey of course denies that the timing of this story has anything at all to do with Tuesday's election, since he's not personally running for re-election this time around. We'll assume of course that his lips were moving when he uttered this denial, and will thus draw all reasonable inferences therefrom.
Just to kick-start the morning discussion, we'll shamelessly incorporate Dan S.' most cogent comment from the above SE story's comment section, rather than spend another hour or two trying to piece together our own infallible analysis:
We should pay heed to Mark Twain and the many others who have pointed out the deceptive use of statistics. A year ago I carefully analyzed Ogden's crime statistics and reported the results here:(Readers who are seriously interested in the topic of Ogden crime statistics from a historic perspective also ought to take a gander at these articles too.)
Ogden Crime Statistics... Without the Godfrey Distortions
There are just too many ways to present the data. Which categories of crimes do you include? Do you weight all crimes equally or does a murder count more than a simple assault? Do you report total crimes, or crimes per person? If the latter, what population data do you use? How far back in time do you go when reporting long-term trends?
In recent years, the Standard-Examiner has left all of these decisions to the politicians.
Getting a quote from a skeptical expert is better than nothing, but a true journalist would do an independent analysis of the data (or hire an independent expert to do such an analysis).
The Standard-Examiner doesn't even seem to notice when the statistics in one article contradict the statistics in an earlier article. In July 2008 the S-E published a similar crime-trend graph with different numbers: 72 (not 77) in 2000, and 77 (not 67) in 2006, for instance. (I think the discrepancy for 2000 is from using different population data, while the discrepancy for 2006 is because the city reported a higher number of crimes and later revised the number downward.) Here's a link to the earlier graph:
More Pro-Godfrey Spin from the Standard-Examiner
During his 2007 campaign, Godfrey claimed that Ogden's crime rate had dropped 23% between 1999 and 2006. The graph in this article shows a 16% drop between those years, while the July 2008 graph shows only a 4% drop. Godfrey also claimed there had been a 43% drop in the sub-category of violent crimes over the same time period, but the officially available statistics show little or no change in the violent crime rate.
According to the FBI web site, "the FBI discourages data users from ranking agencies [e.g., cities] and using the data as a measure of law enforcement effectiveness."
Uniform Crime Reports
A Word About UCR Data
So what about it gentle readers? Has Boss Godfrey at last embraced his primary and fundamental mayoral role as a zealot for public safety? Is Godfrey the Crime Fighter truly taking a bite out of crime? Or is it the same old story all over again, with Godfrey once again fiddling with the numbers?
Have at it, O Gentle Ones.
Update 10/28/09 10:02 a.m.: Godfrey's Mormon friends at KSL News are covering this story too, and savvy KSL viewers are all taking Godfrey's "eminations" with a grain of salt... shall we say?
Too funny.
