Salt Lake Tribune: State Agency Pulls Crime Report Over Bad Data

So many mistakes in the crime report, that the crime rate and the trend reported [down] had to be hastily withdrawn by the issuing agency

By Curmudgeon

The SL Trib is running a very interesting story this morning. Here's the headline in the print edition, which is also a link to the full story:

• "You just thought crime was down."

The headline on the on-line story reads State Agency Pulls Crime Report Over Bad Data."

And the lede:

The Department of Public Safety recently reported that violent crime, car thefts and juvenile arrests all dropped dramatically in 2009 from the previous year.

The problem is, that may not be true.

The department has pulled its preliminary report on 2009 crime statistics after realizing it published incorrect data for the previous year’s statistics, creating incorrect crime-trend comparisons.

Now please note the next paragraph. I'll bold face it for emphasis:

A Salt Lake Tribune analysis of the report released by the Bureau of Criminal Identification revealed dozens of discrepancies between the numbers in the final 2008 Crime in Utah report and the numbers in the newly released 2009 preliminary report used to generate the trend analysis.

Got that? "A Salt Lake Tribune analysis" of the numbers turned up so many mistakes in the crime report, that the crime rate and the trend reported [down] had to be hastily withdrawn by the issuing agency.

That's what good newspapers do when they get press releases from public officials. They fact check them. They analyze them. The dig into them to see if they stand up to scrutiny.

And that's what the Standard Examiner did not do with the crime stats so cavalierly tossed around by the Mayor to serve his re-election campaign in Ogden.

How long before we can expect to read, the next time Hizzonah attempts to dazzle the SE with a shower of dubious numbers a story leading "A Standard Examiner analysis of the numbers revealed that..."

Not holding my breath.

How can you operate a mid-sized urban daily in this statistics-driven age and not have on staff or on call someone with the necessary expertise to crunch numbers, to analyze statistics to see if they in fact say what a candidate or office holder claims they say?