Loss from crime

A comment on yesterday's blog post asked an interesting question:

"How does bicycle theft compare in annual dollar losses to other crime categories? I have a hunch that the monetary loss in that category is higher than any others. Am I right?"

Here's a comparison among some of the common property crimes:

The dollar amounts are a combination of the theft loss and any property damage. Although auto theft tops this partial list, it's a little misleading. In Lincoln, the vast majority of stolen autos are recovered, so the "loss" is only temporary. Joyriding and "transportation auto theft" make up the majority of our offenses. Keep in mind that these are only offenses reported to the police.

The total loss from all crimes in Lincoln during 2007 was $15,162,769.

Spree vandalism

Spree vandalism is the senseless crime of committing a large series of property damage over a short period of time, in a spree. I've never understood the attraction of driving around shooting windows, smashing mailboxes, or slashing tires, but that's the typical M.O. of a vandalism spree.

A Sunday comment by a reader of The Chief's Corner suggested that I blog on this topic, because we had one of these last weekend: eight tire slashings in a small area in south Lincoln. It's probably related to another tire slashing spree in a different part of town that occurred overnight from January 9 to 10. The most common kind of vandalism spree involves the use of BB or pellet guns to shoot out car windows. Windshields and rear windows are typically in the $300 range, with side glass around $250, so the bucks can add up quickly.

The largest sprees are often solved, because vandals can't help but brag about their exploits. Inevitably word seems to make it's way back to one of the victims, or to somebody else who the vandals have annoyed. People who would commit such crimes have a tendency to make plenty of enemies in other aspects of their lives--a decided advantage from an investigative standpoint.

That's how we solved our our biggest single spree in recent years, which occurred on November 11, 2005. Three fine young men popped 144 windows with total damage conservatively estimated by our officers at $37,835. The county attorney filed felonies on this crew, and two of the three actually got six months of three hots and a cot. The third received 30 days in jail and 3 years of probation. The chance of a victim getting restitution from such deadbeats is between slim and none. The biggest tire slashing spree in recent years was overnight 0n December 2, 2003, when tires were slashed on 42 vehicles resulting in $6,715 damage.

As I have often pointed out, there is one rather effective preventative measure. It's not equally available to all, but if it's an option for you, it's worth the effort to park your car in the driveway, rather than on the street. The three car monte in the morning as everyone in the family is preparing to leave at different times can be a hassle, but it works.

Another common kind of vandalism spree is the destruction of mailboxes with a ball bat or club swung from the passenger side of a passing vehicle. Back In November, 2002 a group of three young men were driving around Northeast Lincoln vandalizing mailboxes. The front seat passenger was the designated hitter, using a golf club. During one hit, the shaft of the 3-wood broke off above the hosel . The club head, with a few inches of shaft attached, ricocheted into the open rear passenger window, impaled itself in the head of the back seat passenger and killed him.

Overall in 2007, we suffered 5,258 vandalisms, with a total loss of $1.3 million. Hardly a small-potatoes crime. Motor vehicles were the most common target (click to enlarge):

From the inbox

On Friday, I received this missive:

"Chief Cassidy,

Just wanted to take a minute of your time to alert you of the growing speeding problems on Capital Parkway West. With O Street being closed due to the bridge replacement, many drivers are exceeding the speed limit to make up for the additional drive time. As I drive this route to work every day, I'm often passed by cars at least 10 if not 20 mph over the limit. This morning again I was nearly rear ended by a speeding car. As I neared downtown I slowed for the drop to the 35 mph limit and since the car in the left-hand lane also slowed, the speeding car had to hit the brakes pretty hard to keep from hitting us.

I rarely see any traffic enforcement on this road. Maybe once a month or so. I hope the Police department could pay more attention to this stretch of road.

Thanks for your time."

On Monday, this message arrived:

"To Whom It May Concern,

I live in southwest Lincoln and use Rosa Parks Way at least 2-4 times a day. Speeding does not seem to be a big problem on this road, other than a few that I have seen in the past 2 years, the fastest of which, did get pulled over. The problem that I have is that the police department regularly has speed checks on this road. I have never gotten a ticket for speeding in Lincoln, but they pull everyone over going just over the speed limit, even though there are no hazards around (schools, residences, commercial properties, pedestrians, bicyclists, etc.)...I will change my route, even though it will add 10-15 minutes to my commute. Then, another young person with advanced degrees will leave the city of Lincoln ASAP. Please let me know what you will do to remedy this situation."

For my out-of-town readers, you should know that Capital Parkway West was renamed Rosa Parks Way last year. Both correspondents are referring to the same stretch of road. Maybe I should just forward each of them the other's email.

Impact of growth

Lincoln has a steady historic population growth rate during the past 100 years that averages a bit over 1% per year. Since the 2000 census, Lincoln's population has grown by about 21,000. Essentially, in the past seven years, we've added the city of Columbus, Nebraska to our population. Columbus, a little city at the confluence of the Loup and Platte rivers, is Nebraska's 14th largest city. It has six public elementary schools, one middle school, one public and one parochial high school. It has a library, senior center, 34 churches, a hospital, a community college, and a pair of 18-hole golf courses.

Columbus also has a police department, with 35 officers and 17 vehicles. Taking on the population of Columbus since 2000, Lincoln has added 21 officers. Considering the extant administrative, investigative, and support infrastructure in place in Lincoln, I'd say that's about right to account for the population increase. Trouble is, Columbus started out a lot larger than Lincoln in police per capita to begin with. Columbus has 1.63 officers per 1,000 residents. Lincoln has 1.30 per 1,000. If Lincoln's police force was the same size as Columbus, we'd need to add 90 more officers to our force of 317. If we did that, we would then rank sixth in Nebraska in the ratio of police officers to residents, still way behind places like Omaha and Grand Island.

Lincoln's growth is having a major impact on the police department. If you draw a circle with a radius of half a mile at 87th and Highway 2, we handled 339 police dispatches within that circle last year. In 2001, we handled a whooping eight. It's not just the number of dispatches, though, it's also the geographic spread of the city. Lincoln's added nearly 15 square miles during that time period. Think about this: the officer sent to the traffic accident at 87th and Highway 2 at shift change is travelling nearly 8 miles as the crow flies from headquarters. If you're wondering, it's a 23 minute trip at 3:30 p.m..

Here's an interesting graphic of Lincoln's geographic growth I made for a presentation I did at the City Director's meeting last Wednesday. It's an animated map of Lincoln's historic growth. Click on the image to start the loop.

Intern turns up

Last summer, I wrote a few posts on The Chief's Corner about an interesting series of projects an intern, Kyle Heidtbrink, was working on. After snagging his bachelor's degree, Kyle spent the summer with us--unpaid--just to get some practical real-world experience. He did some valuable analyses of sex offender residency and movement. (Speaking of which, this arrest early yesterday morning by Sgt. Jason Stille was a really nice job--he found the defendant hiding in the shower in his underwear).

I had lost track of Kyle towards the end of his internship, which finished up in our Narcotics Unit, located in another part of town. So I was glad to hear from him this week when he emailed me on Tuesday. Here's an excerpt.

"I'd like like give you the scoop on what's been happening in my life lately. I recently acquired a job with AMEC Earth & Environmental, an engineering firm located in Topeka, KS. I really think that my experience with the police department this past summer was a major contribution to being offered this position. For that reason, I wanted to thank you for your time and effort in making the internship a reality. It was a pleasant experience and gave me the unique opportunity to understand what it feels like to know that the work I was doing made a difference in the community. I guess that's probably one of the biggest things any law enforcement officer can take home each and every day he/she comes to work. "

It's good to know that his internship helped him land a sweet job. I think internships for college students are incredibly valuable, and we've had many, many interns go on to successful careers that, like Kyle, gained some valuable experience here at LPD. We benefit from their enthusiasm and talent, and try to return the favor by providing them with interesting and worthwhile work experience. Congratulations, Kyle!

Frequent flier

I keep a manila folder in my lower left desk drawer labeled "Bad B&G". It's been there for over a decade. The B&G stands for "Boys & Girls." It's a single-spaced two page list of every person arrested or cited for a criminal offense by the Lincoln Police Department 200 times or more, since we computerized our records in 1980. There are 83 names on the list, which was just updated late last month.

Eddie, with 652 Lincoln Police Department arrests since 1980, is perched at the top. He's our Hank Aaron. When I started keeping the file, I could ask any Lincoln police officer who the most-arrested person in the city was, and the instant answer from everyone was "Eddie." Today, there are a growing number of officers who never had the honor, because Eddie died back in January, 2004. I figured his record was safe, and that no one would ever match his staying power.

I was wrong. Barring his untimely demise, Kevin should rocket past Eddie in 2008. His 615 arrests leave him in third place at the moment, but he had a prolific 2007, with 66 arrests. He enjoys a distinct advantage over number one and two--he's still alive. Those 66 arrests are quite an accomplishment, given the limited amount of time he had during the year when he was not in jail. He's in the slammer now, serving a 180 day assault sentence for beating, kicking, and biting a girlfriend. He went in on November 18, so if he's been good, he should be back out shortly and can continue his climb to the top of the page.

Like many of my Bad B&Gs, Kevin is an alcoholic drug abuser, and many of his arrests are for public order crimes like drinking in public, panhandling, trespassing, urinating in public, and so forth. But he's also been arrested for robbery, false imprisonment, weapons offenses, and assault--25 times for assault. Among the assaults is a 1997 case in which Kevin was convicted of slashing the throat of a 34 year old victim who barely survived. That one landed him a five year prison sentence for 2nd degree assault and use of a weapon to commit a felony.

All told, Kevin has been sentenced to 5,086 days in prison or jail since he landed in Lincoln in 1989. That's 14 years. He's also been fined $31,576. I doubt if he paid any of those fines, rather he sat them out in jail at $60 or so a day--another year and a half.

The revelation that a 43 year old man can be arrested 615 times is a shocker for most people, but it's not for police officers--in Lincoln or elsewhere. A couple years ago, Capt. Dennis Duckworth inadvertently created a little dust-up in his early morning press briefing when he mentioned an overnight arrest. He casually noted that it was the defendant's 226th arrest by LPD. The story hit the wire, and was published worldwide. I ended up with a Chicago Tribune columnist, Howard Witt, in my office chatting about the phenomenon.

Mr. Witt, unlike many, understood that this had nothing to do with Lincoln or with Nebraska. The same frequent fliers (not to mention their offspring) are on a first name basis with the police in any city. The difference in Lincoln was simply that--unlike L.A., Chicago, or Houston--in Lincoln the information on past arrests is accurately and instantly available to the overnight shift commander giving the boring details of a slow night to the bleary-eyed reporter at 5:00 a.m..

Party crashers

Last November, I blogged about some of the hazards that arise from large, open-invitation drinking parties. In Not all harmless fun I described a couple of "party invasion" robberies that had occurred in the North Bottoms neighborhood on the preceding weekend.

Well, they're back. Sunday morning, I was reading overnight reports waiting for the newspaper to arrive, when I encountered the Incident Reports on three robberies in the 1100 block of Claremont Street, just after midnight. Apparently, the victims, leaving a party were confronted by a group of assailants cruising the neighborhood just for the purpose of committing such crimes. The victims were jumped, and lost cash, credit card, wallet, cell phone and (of course) the 12-pack they were toting to their next stop.

My guess would be that at least some of the suspects were also involved in the November cases in the same neighborhood. Party crashers seem to be coming in two types: "invaders," who are looking to forcibly rob and assault the inebriated and meek; and "slinkers," who will secretly look around, lift a purse or two, and maybe case the place for a later burglary. We've had our share of both, and made a few arrests in such cases.

It appears that this is a growing risk of hosting a rent party, or something that looks like one to the gang on the prowl for tipsy victims who are accustomed to a little high school chest-bumping, but not to real violence. With spring on the horizon, and Phase II of the high-risk drinking party scene about to unfold, this is worth keeping in mind.

We are not alone. A Google search and a click on the News link revealed quite a few recent news articles from far-flung media sources. This phenomenon of violent party invasion is occurring in many other locations, and the story is often quite similar to our own local cases.

Biggest threat to public safety

There are no TV shows about it. I can't think of any movies or books either. By far and away, though it's the biggest threat to public safety in our City, State, and nation.

Traffic crashes.

Last year, they killed 256 people in Nebraska. By comparison, there were 53 murders. In Lincoln, there were 9,713 traffic crashes in 2007, injuring over 2,500 people. I don't have the data right now on the total property loss, but it was huge. It is a threat that effects more people than anything else. That's why traffic enforcement and traffic control is an important part of our job.

Fred Zwonechek, the administrator of the Nebraska Office of Highway Safety sent a chart to me a couple of weeks ago showing the fatal crash trend in Nebraska back to 1980, benchmarked against the number of vehicle miles travelled (click to enlarge):


That's an impressive reduction. Had the rate remained the same, 152 more people would have died in Nebraska traffic crashes last year. Lincoln's traffic accident rate has also been falling over this same time period, although it's been pretty much unchanged since 2003.

Declining crash rates are attributable to a variety of causes: better roadway engineering, anti-lock brakes, vigorous law enforcement (especially drunk driving), and graduated drivers licenses all come to mind. In addition to those things that reduce the number of crashes, other factors influence the number of fatalities and the number and severity of injuries: seat belts, child restraints, air bags, and helmets are all obvious, and have had a huge impact.

My first few years in policing were spent as a traffic specialist. I was a member of a six-person Alcohol Safety Action Program squad that handled 1992 DWI arrests in 1974. Remarkably, four of us are still at LPD: myself, Jon Morris, Steve Wetzel, and Mike Garnett. By the middle of 1975, I was a motor officer on the second shift, dedicated to investigating traffic crashes and writing tons and tons of tickets. Traffic is in my blood, but more importantly, it's critical to our mission of providing services that promote a safe and secure community. You can expect it to continue to be an important emphasis.