Comments on: Vivek B: Long term crime tracking by area and beat

By: VivekB

VivekB — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:30:57 +0000

Stats through Aug ’08 are now complete. I tried my hand at creating an “executive summary” in English this time as the tables aren’t the easiest to read if you’re not a numbers wonk.

http://www.rockridgeresidents.org/aug_stats is the link, registered & logged in users only.

It’s got YTD and Medians per month for the following crime categories:
- Violent (crimes against a person)
- Property
- Violent + Property + Drug (aka, the stuff we should worry about)
- All Crimes

There’s also now a page with the actual penal codes for each of those buckets, and a page with “unallocated” crimes that will only show up in the “all crimes” bucket, so y’all can check my work.

It’s got the following geographies:
- Oakland Wide
- Area 1, 2, & 3
- Beats 4X, 7X, 9X, 10X, 11X, 12X, 12Y/13X, 13Y.

By: VivekB

VivekB — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:34:42 +0000

Californio: The reason I made that comment is that it was nearly unilaterally green across the board. Certainly at a micro-level causation could be problematic due to multiple factors, but at a macro-level I can’t think of any reason why we’re below the 2008 median truly across the board. Of course, I’m no pro here, so if folks have a good reason tell me.

Just as we’re all quick to condemn the OPD when average crime rates go up year over year, so should we be ready to congratulate them when rates go down. It’s hypocritical for us (not saying you specifically, the general We) for us to say that crime rate increase is OPD’s fault, but crime rate decrease isn’t due to OPD. We need to pick one mentality – are deviations in crime rates at OPD’s feet or not, and stick with that story in good times and bad.

By: Californio

Californio — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:17:27 +0000

Not sure about your conclusion that “the OPD did something right in June,” etc. It might be the OPD’s doing, but then again it might not. Fluctuations in crime rate have numerous causes, as we all know. Did the OPD do something specific in the neighborhood that would reduce crime? Do you correlate the officers’ attendance at the NCPC’s with the latest-month reduction in crime? Or? Causation is notoriously difficult to demonstrate in criminology (especially when dealing with crimes of opportunity), and it’s important to know when not to draw a conclusion from data. I realize your statement was made as a passing comment and not intended to be formal, but, hey, let’s be careful!

By: VivekB

VivekB — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:35:25 +0000

I can easily tell you # of robberies & burglaries per beat per month, would that help?

By: Max Allstadt

Max Allstadt — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:05:17 +0000

I have a little theory that some cross referenced data might prove/disprove.

Income and robbery/burglary on the same map. I hypothesize you’ll find the highest robbery and burglary rates where rich people are closest to poor people. Inequality of money is like inequality of solute on opposite sides of a membrane.

By: VivekB

VivekB — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:31:07 +0000

Thanks, great idea, That would be value-add (assuming I can get them by OPD beat (or geographic area).

By: Matt B

Matt B — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:55:08 +0000

One thing you may want to add to your calculations is the rate of crimes. That way you aren’t comparing the number of crimes in one beat of, say, 10,000 people, to another beat of 20,000 people. For that you need the yearly population of the various areas. Hard to get, but Urban Strategies Council has done some estimates. For the city, you can access the CA Department of Finance website.