He said violent crime is up about 13 percent – driven in large part by shoplifters who fight with security guards, escalating the crime to robbery – and property crime is up about 9 percent, driven primarily by a spike in auto thefts. We are making extraordinary strides in Connecticut, with crime at nearly a 50-year low and violent crime dropping dramatically each year.
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Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s office, said in a statement that “we take the increase in reported sexual assaults very seriously, however, we would hope that some of the uptick in reported incidents has to do with increased awareness efforts by law enforcement and the victim advocacy community”.
He said of the current information collected: “As helpful as this information is, however, we need more law enforcement agencies to submit their justifiable homicide data so that we can better understand what is happening across the country”.
The FBI’s report, however, shows a sharper decrease in violent crime than a similar report issued by the state just a week ago. The property crime numbers have bounced around over the five years, from a low of 8,894 offenses in 2011 to 11,276 offenses in 2012 and 9,113 offenses in 2014.
Over the last four years, the governor said they have delivered precipitous crime drops in the state. “Connecticut did not use the expanded definition of rape in 2013”. “Their methodology is the only way to get an apples-to-apples comparison to other states”.
Regarding the numbers in 2015, Lawlor said, “This year, arrests are way down, admission to prison is way down, the juvenile population [in prison] is way down”. But despite these successes, we know it’s not true everywhere.
Nonviolent property crimes have also decreased in the state during 2014, including a 7.6% drop in burglaries, a 2.1 % drop in larcenies, and a 2.1 % drop in motor vehicle thefts. Both incumbent Democratic mayors – Pedro Segarra in Hartford and Bill Finch in Bridgeport – lost their races on September 16 after their opponents repeatedly criticized them for spikes in violent crime, including shootings and murders.
Yates’ remarks in Detroit came while announcing an expansion of the federal Violence Reduction Network to include five more cities where violent crime has increased at a rate above the national average: Compton, Calif., Flint, Mich., Little Rock, Ark., West Memphis, Ark., and Newark, N.J. The program, launched past year in Camden, N.J., Wilmington, De., Detroit, Chicago and the Oakland-Richmond, Calif., area, provides communities with access to existing federal law enforcement resources to assist local agencies. Ask the 40 or 50 people who have been shot if crime is down….
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Laurie Robinson, co-chair of Obama’s task force, described FBI data published on Monday as flawed and unreliable, adding that any potential changes to police practice in the USA after nationwide scrutiny accompanied unrest in Ferguson would not have filtered through by the end of 2014. “All they’re doing is chasing calls”.
