Chitwood's phony, manipulated crime stats

Unregistered · 09-25-2018, 10:34 PM

Have you heard the news? During Chitwood’s very first year in office as Sheriff, the crime rate in VCSO’s jurisdiction dropped a whopping 22.7 percent! Great news, you say? Cause for celebration, you say? Certainly would be -- if only it were true. But like all things Chitwood, a closer examination reveals the miraculous crime reduction as reported to FDLE to be a total sham. Sadly, it’s nothing more than deception, dishonesty and data manipulation. So what’s really going on here?

For starters, VCSO’s 22.7 percent decrease in the UCR crime rate for 2017 is a greater reduction than virtually every other Sheriff’s Office in the state. Is Chitwood a master tactician? Does he possess magical powers? Does he have some secret crime-fighting strategy? Does he know something that no other Sheriff in the entire state of Florida knows? Or are Chitwood’s crime stats so out of line with the rest of the state and with historical trends to the point that they simply cannot be believed? You be the judge.

For a little historical perspective, here’s a snapshot of the changes in VCSO’s UCR crime rate as reported to FDLE over the 9-year period between 2009-2017:

2009: -2.9 percent
2010: -5.6 percent
2011: -1.6 percent
2012: -3.2 percent
2013: -11.2 percent
2014: -7.0 percent
2015: -4.9 percent
2016: -1.9 percent
2017: -22.7 percent

In looking at the individual UCR offense categories, the highlights of last year’s massive 22.7 percent drop under Chitwood included virtually unprecedented reductions in burglaries (from 922 in 2016 to 657 in 2017) and larcenies (from 2,881 in 2016 to 2,162 in 2017). The question remains, how was VCSO under Chitwood able to achieve such remarkable crime-fighting results? Part of the answer, it seems, is revealed in a memo documenting discussions that took place during a VCSO staff meeting on January 17, 2017. Just 14 days after the new Sheriff was sworn into office, the written overview of the staff meeting reports a radical change in the way crime data would be collected and reported to the state under the Chitwood administration. Under the header “Master Case Number for Multiple Incidents,” the written minutes of the staff meeting reflect the following: “Whenever a deputy takes a report for multiple car burglaries in a neighborhood, which apparently occurred at about the same time, only one case number shall be pulled.”

This unequivocally shows that the data has been manipulated to reflect a phony reduction in crime. After all, when ten car breaks magically become one, it’s easy to show a reduction in crime. This clearly explains the unprecedented reduction in burglaries. Just take a look at the annual burglary stats for the VCSO jurisdiction and ask yourself this question: Do these numbers make sense?

2009: 1,830
2010: 1,765
2011: 1,878
2012: 1,687
2013: 1,390
2014: 1,125
2015: 1,003
2016: 922
2017: 657

But this is only part of the story. Law enforcement officers have always enjoyed a great deal of discretion in deciding whether to document their response to any particular call for service in a written incident report. According to multiple VCSO deputies, they’ve been discouraged by the Chitwood regime from writing reports under certain circumstances. Why? Because UCR crime stats are based on reported offenses documented in written police reports. Fewer written reports means fewer offenses to report to the state, and that translates into an artificially reduced crime rate. That, plus the bundling of multiple incidents into a single report, explains why the overall number of written reports generated by VCSO deputies dropped from 32,567 in 2016 to 31,823 in 2017. And that, in turn, lifts the Chitwood curtain of deceit to reveal the total fraud behind his phony crime reduction.

Yet another part of the manipulation involves the way that offenses are classified when reports are written. For those who don’t know, UCR stats track crime trends in seven specific offense categories -- murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft. Another way to manipulate UCR crime data is to simply classify an offense report as something other than one of the above seven categories. When you do that, the offense doesn’t count towards the agency’s UCR crime rate. So maybe a car break-in with no sign of forced entry or a missing bicycle are written up as suspicious incidents instead of a burglary or larceny. Could that explain why the number of suspicious incident reports generated by VCSO deputies jumped by 13.9 percent during Chitwood’s first year in office -- from 705 in 2016 to 803 in 2017? Again, you’ll need to decide.

Personally, I’ve already made up my mind. To me, Chitwood’s phony tough-on-crime persona is nothing more than smoke-and-mirrors deceit, data manipulation and non-stop self-promotion at the expense of the VCSO and its employees, the community and crime victims everywhere. Unfortunately, the voters were hoodwinked in 2016 by the Chitwood media machine. Hopefully their eyes will be wide open in 2020 when Chitwood is up for re-election. I don’t know about you, but I like my Sheriff to be honest. I like my Sheriff to be a leader and a real crime-fighter. And I like my Sheriff to treat his employees with respect. In my opinion, Chitwood is a total and complete failure in all categories. Then again, that’s just my opinion. Maybe someone here has a different explanation for the above-cited data. If so, I’d love to hear it!

Unregistered · 09-25-2018, 10:46 PM

This is probably one of the better posts ever written here. It is full of facts, figures and truth. Great job and kudos to the writer.

Unregistered · 09-25-2018, 11:06 PM

You do realize “larceny” includes car breaks according to the FBI UCR. Though it is classified as a burglary according to state law, UCR is what the standards for reporting crime statistics are. Therefore, every single car break is reported as a larceny (still a part one crime by the way). Educate yourself before exposing your stupid.

Unregistered · 09-25-2018, 11:23 PM