I came across an interesting article describing the issues Rochester has been facing with shootings, and increased gang violence. The article advocates prevention as a means of intervention to try and curb these activities.
You can read the article at http://blog.uwolmsted.org/2009/06/the-street/
On the average day in Olmsted County, the Rochester Police Department and Olmsted Sheriff’s office see very few burglaries. There may be at most two or three reports on a given day. I noticed, however, that yesterday (February 17th) there was a rash of seven burglaries in the northwest part of Rochester, along with one additional burglary in Chatfield.
These seven burglaries all occurred between the hours of 5:00AM and 10:00AM, and happened in two neighborhoods close together in the northwest part of town (see picture). On the crime map, the black mask icon represents the burglary calls.
The Rochester Police Department Crime Prevention office indicates that one of the incidents was a gas can being stolen out of a garage at a residence, but no details are out yet on the other incidents. We hope to see some additional information later this morning. I will update this blog posting when more details are available, along with adding that information to the icons on the crime map.
Edit: The website is now updated with the incident details from the other burglary incidents, and it seems that many of them involve items being taken from cars within garages. This is a good reminder to keep your doors locked, and your garage door closed to prevent theft.
Crime is certainly in the news lately, but are crime incidents going up or down in Olmsted County so far this year? We can get some idea by looking at the number of calls for service for January last year, and compare that to January this year.
I chose nineteen different calls for service categories, and summed up how many happened in January 2008, and compared that number to January 2009. This includes the Rochester Police Department and the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Department (excluding duplicates when they collaborated on the same case). The graph below represents the percentage change in calls from 2008 to 2009. A number below zero is the percentage drop in calls, and a number above zero is the percentage increase in calls for that particular category.
Overall, the trend seems to be a downward shift in calls from last year. Motor vehicle thefts are down 47.5%. Burglaries, assaults, and thefts as well are all down a marginal amount.
What was quite surprising though was the large increase in calls regarding child abuse and child neglect. Looking at the numbers, there are a much smaller amount of calls for those two categories, so an increase of just a handful ends up to be a fairly large percentage. Still, I hope that statistic does not represent a trend in our community. Here are the specific call counts for each category, and their corresponding percentages.
| Comparing Jan ‘08 to Jan ‘09 - Calls for Service | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Jan-08 | Jan-09 | Percent Difference |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 40 | 21 | -47.5% |
| Trespass | 60 | 41 | -31.7% |
| Burglary | 52 | 39 | -25.0% |
| Noise Violation | 115 | 90 | -21.7% |
| Domestic Problem | 54 | 46 | -14.8% |
| Forgery | 14 | 12 | -14.3% |
| Criminal Damage to Property | 78 | 67 | -14.1% |
| Assault | 48 | 42 | -12.5% |
| Theft | 281 | 247 | -12.1% |
| Disorderly Conduct | 105 | 95 | -9.5% |
| Controlled Substances | 44 | 41 | -6.8% |
| Dispute | 48 | 45 | -6.3% |
| Robbery | 2 | 2 | 0.0% |
| Driving Under the Influence | 66 | 71 | 7.6% |
| Intoxicated Person | 79 | 85 | 7.6% |
| Suspicious Circumstances | 268 | 292 | 9.0% |
| Sexual Assault | 14 | 19 | 35.7% |
| Child Neglect | 7 | 15 | 114.3% |
| Child Abuse | 3 | 9 | 200.0% |
Note: Soon, anyone will be able to run some reports such as right here on Rochester911.com. The reporting page is currently being developed so that everyone will be able to create charts and tables of crime statistics, either on particular categories, or to gather statistics for their neighborhood.
Do you wonder what type of criminal convictions happen in Olmsted County? I’ve put together the statistics in a table, listing out every single conviction that an Olmsted County judge has sentenced for 2008. There is quite a variety of charges, from thefts to drugs to careless driving, and even some tampering with a witness charges.
What is really surprising though, at least to me, was the extremely high number of DUI convictions relative to all the others combined. The three statutes indicating DUI’s totaled 38% of the convictions in Olmsted County for 2008. The next highest? I had to add up all the different variations of drug convictions, and I got roughly 6%. Then domestic assaults are around 3%.
I knew drunken driving was a large problem, but wow. One in three cases going to the courthouse involve a DUI. Looking at the state of Minnesota’s convictions overall, this is about the norm. You can download an excel file with the entire list of convictions, total counts, and percentages below and analyze it for yourself.
Let me know if you discover anything else interesting from this list!
Download 2008 Olmsted County Conviction Statistics (Excel)
This information was compiled from publicity available data obtained from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
“These won’t apply to me. These don’t happen in my neighborhood!”
Sadly, the four scenarios that will be discussed in this article happen everywhere in Olmsted County. In the rich neighborhoods, downtown, while making that quick run to Target, anywhere. These are common situations taken right from daily experiences from the Rochester Police Department and Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office.
Seems a bit obvious, but this happens … a lot! The common scenario is a thief will just pick a neighborhood, any neighborhood, and walk down the street … looking in car windows and trying door handles. If there is something plainly visible and of value in a car, they will even resort to breaking out windows to steal it.
Make sure you don’t leave valuable items in plain sight, such as:
A law enforcement officer told us,
“… there are probably 30 to 40 cases of theft from vehicles each week on average. They don’t happen in just certain neighborhoods, thieves can and do target anywhere in the city. With some easy preventative measures, people could help avoid this unfortunate situation.”