Remember during the mayoral election in March when the newspapers were throwing questions at Zuma Dogg to answer...
Friday, February 20, 2009
Los Angeles Mayoral Candidate Zuma Dogg Answers Questions For Daily News
QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY LOS ANGELES MAYORAL CANDIDATE ZUMA DOGG FOR LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS (To appear in upcoming issue)
DN: The main accomplishment cited by the mayor is the reduction in crime in Los Angeles and the passage of the trash fee to fund the hiring of 1,000 additional officers. Some of you have contested the figures, please explain your thinking. Also, would you continue the trash fee if elected or how would you allocate it on city spending.
ZD: When people hear these statistics, I think they say to themselves, "It doesn't feel like crime is down. It feels like we are losing the streets to the criminals, more than ever." And you always have to beware statistics because they can be manipulated in the way you conduct the survey in what types of crimes are counted in the survey and other parameters that can vary the results.
I spoke with [an elected official in the district] today and asked about the crime reductions numbers and expressed my concern that the statistics can be manipulated and I question the validity.
Now, today...FROM ALL THE NEWSWIRES:
The Los Angeles Police Department's online crime map intended for public use has failed to include nearly 40 percent of serious crimes reported in the city.
The omissions, dating back at least six months, include thousands of crimes known to LAPD officials and included in their official crime statistics.
The newspaper reported that among the 19,000 incidents between Jan. 1 and June 13 that do not appear at lapdcrimemaps.org were 26 homicides, 137 rapes and 10,766 personal, vehicle or other nonviolent thefts.
The lapses mean the map, touted by city leaders as an important resource for city residents to determine whether their neighborhoods are safe, presents a drastically incomplete image of city crime.
The Times said it discovered the magnitude of the problem while developing its own online map to display LAPD data. Comparing the LAPD map with the department's official totals revealed that thousands of crimes through mid- June were missing.
The department's official crime tally recorded more than 52,000 serious crimes this year. But the database on the public mapping site contained fewer than 33,000 for the same period.
The map available to the public at lapdcrimemaps.org is a joint venture between the Web development firm LightRay Productions and the engineering company PSOMAS, which manages it.
In an e-mail to The Times late Wednesday, PSOMAS Vice President Craig Gooch said his company had identified an inadvertent programming error.
[THEIR BAD! Don't worry, they "fixed the glitch" although reported crimes continued to be missing from the LAPD map. Make that "THEIR BAD, SQUARED!]
zumadoggBRATTON & VILLARAIGOSA ARE D-O-N-E IN THIS TOWN AND WILL N-E-V-E-R LIVE THIS DOWN: Crime Stats "drastically incomplete" portrayal. -LA Times
And...
LAPD REPORTING THESE YEAR-TO-YEAR STATS ON JULY 7th for July 4th weekend. Wonder if that includes the 40% omission, or not?
July 07, 2009
COMPSTAT Citywide Profile
Crime Statistics July 4, 2009
VIOLENT CRIMES 2009** 2008** % Chg
Homicide 140* 197 -28.9%
Rape 390 414 -5.8%
Robbery 6147 6371 -3.5%
Agg Assaults ** 5706 6180 -7.7%
Total Violent Crimes 12,383 13,162 -5.9%
PROPERTY CRIMES
Burglary 9103 9591 -5.1%
BTFV 14418 15199 -5.1%
Personal/Other Theft 13453 13984 -3.8%
Auto Theft 9290 11228 -17.3%
Total Property Crimes 46,264 50,002 -7.5%
Total Part I Crimes 58,647 63,164 -7.2%
* Numbers reflects a change in reclassification for Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) guidelines and numbers are adjusted accordingly.
** Prior to 2005, Aggravated Assaults included Child/Spousal Simple Assaults
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