Overall LR crime rises a bit

Homicides up in ’14, other crimes hold steady, data show

Little Rock saw only a slight increase in overall crime in the first five months of 2014 despite a near doubling of the city's homicide rate in those months.

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Little Rock crime statistics by patrol division

Police Chief Stuart Thomas told city officials last week that despite the well-documented rise in homicides, a first glance at department data shows that crime in the city "is about the same" as last year.

Overall, crime went up just 0.6 percent, going from 6,648 reported major offenses in the first part of 2013 to 6,690 through May of this year.

The differences, Thomas said, are reflected by where the crime is clustering.

An analysis of unofficial crime data from the department showed that both violent and property crimes in the city's southwest neighborhoods fell significantly, going from 2,080 reported major offenses to 1,797, a 13.6 percent drop due in part to significant drops in reported robberies and aggravated assaults.

That wasn't the case last year.

Violent and property crime in the southwest surged in the first half of 2013, and while the rate slowed by the end of the year, the division saw a 3.75 percent increase, going from 5,014 incidents to 5,202. That increase was fueled by surges in robberies, which went from 283 to 328, and aggravated assaults, which went from 559 in 2012 to 723 in 2013.

Despite the problems in the southwest, the department finished 2013 with just 28 more criminal offenses citywide than the year before, going from 17,330 in 2012 to close at 17,358 last year.

Total crime in the downtown patrol divisions, those east of University Avenue, dropped nearly 4 percent, from 5,426 to 5,210, and the city's largest patrol division, the northwest, recorded only a slight increase in total crime in 2013, going from 6,890 to 6,946.

Right now, Thomas said, those two divisions are heating up in the first five months of 2014.

In the northwest part of the city, an uptick in aggravated assaults and larcenies over the first five months drove a 7.3 percent increase in total crime, and a 12.4 percent increase in violent crimes, which include homicides, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults, going from 282 through the end of May in 2013 to 317 at the end of last month.

The city's innermost neighborhoods are seeing the biggest increases in violent crimes.

With a boom in aggravated assaults, the downtown division saw total violent crime rise from 371 to 480 from January through May, a nearly 30 percent increase.

Despite the shifts in crime, Thomas said the numbers are trending in the right direction: downward.

In 2010, the department recorded 16,538 total offenses, the lowest since the late 1970s, and although it climbed up to 17,358 major offenses last year, the department's figures show that overall crime has dropped 38.5 percent from the 28,246 major offenses reported 20 years ago.

Even though homicides --which were at 25 at the end of May, a number not reached until October of 2013 -- grab headlines, Thomas said it's the smallest and oftentimes most random of crimes that are pushing crime in the city.

Larcenies, or thefts such as car break-ins, stolen bicycles and missing lawn equipment, were up citywide, going from 3,787 in the first five months of 2013 to 4,197 in the part of this year.

An analysis of total reported larcenies, and attempted larcenies, which are not counted in the city's final crime statistics, showed that most of those crimes amounted to low costs to the victims.

According to department figures, 58 percent, or 2,344 of the 4,386 reported thefts and attempted thefts, were less than $200, while 1,640 of those, just over 37 percent, resulted in losses of less than $50.

Random, or "other" thefts, such as knickknacks stolen by relatives and missing lawn chairs, accounted for roughly a third of all crimes.

Thomas said that he would like to tinker with how these types of crimes get reported in a way that could lead to more effective investigations.

Most minor larceny calls are handled on the phone, Thomas said, where a non-emergency operator takes a report, and often, that is the end of it.

By transitioning those calls to officers and supervisors in patrol divisions, or even to available officers on patrol, investigators will get more thorough and useful details on what disappeared, when, and who might be involved.

Thomas also thinks that the roll-out of a new, real-time software program designed to predict where crime is likely to happen will help patrol officers quash crime before it can occur.

As evidenced by the most recent crime data, criminal activity tends to cluster -- and shift -- throughout the city. While the department has used COMPSTAT, a method of crime data analysis that is common across the country, Thomas thinks a new software program simply called "Predictive Policing," which uses nearly five years of crime data, will enhance officers' and detectives' ability to be proactive.

The $45,000 software system, one developed by mathematicians and social scientists in California and used by several large police departments including Atlanta and Los Angeles, will use algorithms, call data, officers' reports, and historical data to "predict" pockets of crime.

Using the software on their in-car computers, officers can check for a range of types of crimes, find a likely "zone," and then head that way.

Assistant chief of police Hayward Finks says it's no different than a directed patrol, but one that operates in real time, and has the backing of a sophisticated swath of data and analysis.

"It will enhance what we're already doing but it'll allow us to do it quicker," Finks said. "If [an officer] can turn on a computer, [he] can use the software."

Finks said the department's crime analysts are working out the bugs in the system and training the trainers, but he thinks the system will be fully mainstreamed in patrol within a month.

Eventually, patrol supervisors can pull up a map of the city, check the predicted hot spots, and also check on where each individual patrol car has patrolled.

Finks said that the department is trying to sync its own reporting system with the software so whenever an officer goes to a hot spot, the officer can pull up any kind of report from that area and get up to speed on an area's criminal history in a matter of minutes.

When asked whether commanders are worried about reluctance from veteran officers to taking cues from a computer, Finks said that the department's patrol officers, especially its veterans, are professionals who've learned to adapt before.

"If something happens, our officers already know the [parties'] name, know their address ... where they can be found," Finks said. "[The software] will not be an insult or a slap in the face of the officer. It will only enhance [their knowledge]."

Finks said that the crime analysts in the department will spend the next year auditing the system to see if, and when, it's been successful and where it needs improvement.

He said it's too hard to say what kind of impact it will have, but said that several agencies that started using the program saw double-digit drops in their crime rate.

Still, it will be at least a year or so before department commanders will really know whether the program has been a hit or a miss, Finks said.

Metro on 06/16/2014

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