3 Boxes of BS

Or at least some of the numbers if the government is in charge.

First locally

One man beat a stranger with a pipe. Another battered a disabled person with a walking cane. Another smashed a large glass mug on his brother’s face.

Though none of the victims was seriously injured, state and federal authorities say each of the attacks was an aggravated assault.

But Dallas police disagree.

A pipe, a walking cane, a beer mug (notice how like most aggravated assaults this don’t involve a firearm?)  are used in a crime but the City of Dallas doesn’t classify them as  “aggravated assault”.

The Police Department classified the attacks as lesser offenses when reporting them to the authorities who collect crime statistics from cities across the nation. As a result, the offenses were not factored into Dallas’ reported violent crime rate.

Hmm, and what is the violent crime rate in Dallas (I’ll just focus on two  stats here)

Total Violent Crime rate — 894.8 per 100,000
Aggravated Assault –586.5 per 100,000

Edited — Total Violent Crime is nearly 1% only, add in property crime and we are differently higher then 1%. (Thanks Reputo for the catch)

Why would the Police Department do this?

Aggravated assaults make up more than one third of the city’s reported violent crime. So a change in them has a big impact on Dallas’ overall violent crime rate.

Why does this matter to advocates of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms?

First in the aspect it makes the city appear safer and there is less of a need for protection from crime.

As one of the department’s top accomplishments since he started as chief in 2004, Kunkle claims a 32 percent decrease in the city’s violent crime rate between that year and 2008.

The News sampled only one week. But given the department’s policy for assault reporting, it stands to reason that many other weeks would look similar. To understand what such underreporting could mean for the city’s violent crime rate, consider this dinner napkin calculation: If 50 percent more aggravated assaults were added to 2008′s total, the drop in the violent crime rate from 2004 would have been 19 percent rather than 32 percent.

Secondly, When non-firearm related weapons are used and under counted, it falsely portrays the firearm as a greater danger then it is.

Most of the misclassified cases involved people attacked with various blunt objects. They included bottles, pipes, bats, rocks, a walking cane, a broom handle, a brick, a glass mug, a vase, a chair and a barstool.

Others included attempted stranglings, cases involving serious injuries, one involving a knife and another involving a rifle.

That messes up any calculations regarding the social utility of firearms in favor of the criminal use of firearms. If half the assaults with non-firearm weapons are mis-classified, the calls for gun control laws look more reasonable.

In Fact according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics  about 75% of all aggravated assaults do not involve a firearm. Changing that statistic would make it.

While comparison of statistics across cities is fraught with problems, the reason for the Uniform Crime Reporting Database is to be consistent….ya know that Uniform business.

People should be able to trust the numbers provided by the law enforcements will be accurately reported. In many cases people use that data to analyze their risk and the precautions needed.

This isn’t the first time or the first place dealing with this problem

Then Else Where, we have a report that may or may not indicate a problem in New York.

A Brooklyn precinct is under investigation for manipulating statistics to make its cops look like better crimefighters, the Daily News has learned.

Two probes are centered around whether Bedford-Stuyvesant’s 81st Precinct recorded felonies as misdemeanors and refused to take complaints from victims – all in an effort to drive down the crime rate, sources said.

A law enforcement officer isn’t the most reliable of sources – especially one that may have a grudge. On the other hand, we know it is not impossible for it to happen.

Again, this is so important because so many anti-rights advocates claim that people will not likely need a firearm to protect themselves.

Of course the statistics are showing how wrong they are.

Please join the discussion.