As Election Day approaches in Springfield, both candidates for mayor say public safety is their top priority.
Ken McClure said there’s work to be done, but Springfield’s crime is not on the same level as bigger Midwestern cities like St. Louis and Detroit.
You are viewing: Why Is Springfield Missouri So Dangerous
Kristi Fulnecky, meanwhile, said violent crime is a big problem in Springfield and her opponent is “not living in reality.”
In Fulnecky’s campaign ads she calls Springfield the 11th most dangerous city in America while saying “we need to take the streets back.”
While it might seem dramatic to imply criminals are running amok in a city with 8 total homicides in all of 2016, there is some data (albeit controversial) to back up Fulnecky’s claim.
Fulnecky is referencing real crime reporting data, but local and national experts dispute the merits of using that data to compare cities.
Fulnecky’s source for the “11th most dangerous city” moniker is the website 24/7 Wall Street which published an article in September ranking cities based on the number of violent crime reports per 100,000 people.
Neighbors Kansas City and St. Louis also made the list of 25, coming in at No. 10 and No. 1, respectively. The rankings are a bad look for Missouri — one that was highlighted by Gov. Eric Greitens during his first State of the State address earlier this year.
But it’s unclear how much credence to give the rankings.
The 24/7 Wall Street website says it got its data from the FBI’s 2015 Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, in which local law enforcement agencies submit their crime stats to the FBI for compilation and analysis.
The website says it came up with its “most dangerous city” rankings by comparing the number of homicides, robberies, rapes and aggravated assaults in U.S. cities with more than 100,000 people.
Springfield’s rate of 1,355.6 violent crime reports per 100,000 people came in at No. 11, according to the website.
The authors of the website apparently ignored a disclaimer the FBI includes with its annual UCR numbers, advising people not to rank cities based strictly on the data.
“These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, tribal area, or region,” the FBI says. “Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents.”
Bridget Patton, spokeswoman for the FBI in Kansas City, said reporting numbers for the UCR is voluntary, so not every city in the country is included.
Patton also said these “most dangerous city” rankings don’t take into account factors that contribute to crime rates like population density, education levels and poverty. Comparing one city to another, she said, should only be done after “careful studying and analysis.”
Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams dismisses the rankings altogether.
“Take them not just with a grain of salt,” Williams said, “but discount them and discredit them because they’re not valid.”
Williams said the UCR numbers are not designed for rankings, but rather for law enforcement agencies to compare their own crime trends from year to year.
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Even going by that standard, however, the numbers had been trending in an undesirable direction for Springfield before a slight downturn last year.
Reports of violent crime in the city more than doubled between 2008 and 2015 before a minimal (0.5 percent) decrease in 2016.
Fulnecky’s campaign ad says violent crime in Springfield increased by more than 73 percent between 2011 and 2015, which is true. The 24/7 Wall Street website says that increase — which is partially attributed to a change in the FBI’s definition of rape — is the second-highest increase of any major U.S. city during that time frame.
Williams pointed out that while violent crime has grown over the last five years, so has the population.
The United States Census Bureau estimates Springfield’s population went up by about 6,000 people between 2011 and 2015. But even factoring in the population growth, Springfield’s rate of violent crime reports increased noticeably during that time frame (from 813 per 100,000 to 1,356 per 100,000).
Williams said those population numbers don’t tell the whole story since Springfield is the “hub of southwest Missouri,” and the city’s daytime or weekend population can be much higher.
It seems reasonable, however, that many other cities on the 24/7 Wall Street list also have bigger daytime populations. Just how much non-residents contribute to a city’s crime rate is tough to quantify — hence the FBI’s position that “most dangerous city” rankings are often too simplistic.
Williams said there’s a variety of factors that contribute to violent crime in Springfield, including poverty and drug use. But the No. 1 driver of violent crime in the city is domestic violence.
Of the 2,262 violent crime reports in Springfield in 2015, about 67 percent were aggravated assaults. Police say more than half of those aggravated assaults were domestic assaults.
That means about a third of all the violent crime reports in the city in 2015 were domestic assaults, which took place between family members, roommates or intimate partners.
Springfield police first noticed a spike in domestic assault numbers in 2012. Since then, the department has tried several strategies to cut down on the problem — including its participation in the Family Violence Task Force and Stop the Violence Conference and its use of a lethality assessment for victims.
Harmony House, Springfield’s domestic violence shelter, recently opened a new larger facility, which law enforcement officials are hopeful will lead to more victims getting out of dangerous situations and allow the number of assaults to go down.
But any community progress over the last four years has yet to be reflected in the crime stats.
The police department has some lofty goals to address the domestic violence problem over the next three years, like establishing a dedicated Family Violence Unit and helping open a Family Justice Center. But accomplishing those goals would require more money and more officers.
“We’re doing everything we can,” Williams said. “I would like to increase the number of investigators we have in that area.”
Both mayoral candidates have said they want to increase the number of officers on the force, but it’s unclear exactly how that would be funded.
Richard Rosenfeld, criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said he was surprised earlier this year when he heard the governor mention Springfield as one of the country’s most violent cities, so he looked at the numbers.
What stood out to Rosenfeld, he said, was poverty in Springfield. The Impacting Poverty Commission said in 2015 that more than 25 percent of Springfield residents were living below the poverty line.
“That provides me some insight into why Springfield might have a higher crime rate than other cities its size,” Rosenfeld said. “It’s not surprising that a city like Springfield with a big-city poverty rate might have a big-city crime rate.”
Rosenfeld said he doesn’t think the “most dangerous city” rankings should be taken as gospel, but there can be some value in comparing Springfield to cities of comparable size with roughly the same characteristics.
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That Springfield would end up on a list like the one compiled by 24/7 Wall Street is likely an indication the city’s violent crime numbers are relatively high, Rosenfeld said.
Rosenfeld said, however, that living in a city with a high crime rate doesn’t necessarily mean you are likely to be a victim of violent crime.
He said there are a number of factors that make someone more or less likely to be a victim, like lifestyle, neighborhood, associates and gender.
“Knowing the city someone lives in tells you next-to-nothing about their risk of crime,” Rosenfeld said.
Aida Hass, a criminology professor at Missouri State University, said comparing cities based on crime rates is tricky because it is difficult to know which police departments are doing a good job finding crime and encouraging victims to file reports.
A high crime rate, Hass said, “could just mean that the police are more on top of things in terms of patrolling neighborhoods.”
Hass said some factors that might contribute to violent crime in Springfield are drugs, unemployment and a lack of mental health resources. She said she doesn’t think the health care and employment opportunities in Springfield have kept up with the population growth over the last 10 years.
“I think there’s a lot of strain and frustration from the lack of resources that people experience,” Hass said.
The Victim Center provides services to victims of violent or sexual crimes in the Springfield area. Brandi Bartel, the organization’s executive director, said the number of people served by the Victim Center has increased by more than 10 percent in each of the last three years.
Last year, Bartel said, the Victim Center served more than 3,800 people.
Bartel said Springfield’s rape and domestic violence numbers are high, and the statistics don’t account for the additional victims who don’t report their crimes to police.
Bartel said she thinks Springfield is overall a safe place, but she cautioned against minimizing the difficulties faced by the thousands of people in the city who are affected by domestic violence.
“Many people, even though it’s behind closed doors, they’re living in terror,” Bartel said. “And that goes for children, and that goes for a lot of women, it goes for at lot of at-risk populations.”
In addition to driving up the assault numbers, domestic violence is also a leading cause of homicides in Springfield.
But the homicide category is where Springfield looks best compared to the other municipalities on the “most dangerous cities” list.
By the UCR definition, there were 10 criminal homicides in Springfield in 2015. A relatively low number that Springfield police attribute in part to the lack of gang activity in the city.
Washington, D.C., which 24/7 Wall Street deemed four spots less dangerous than Springfield, had 162 criminal homicides in 2015.
Williams, the Springfield police chief, said while violent crime has increased in recent years, Springfield is still a safe place to live. He said the city has a property crime problem, but the violent crime numbers are relatively low.
Williams also emphasized that victims of violent crime in Springfield are rarely random, despite the impression you might get from some campaign ads.
“If you’re not involved in a bad relationship, you’re not involved in criminal activity, you’re not involved in the use of illegal narcotics, you’re chance of being a victim of a violent crime in Springfield are very, very slim,” Williams said.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
