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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity of Huntington Beach Crime Statistics Report - Study Ses City of Huntington Beach Crime Statistics Report February 5, 2o18 Report in Two Parts: • History and Overall Climate of Crime Presented by: Robert M. Lehner, MBA. • RecentTrends, Patterns, Police Responses Presented by: Police Chief Robert Handy and Staff. Comparing Crime across Jurisdictions • Comparisons are difficult due to differing circumstances among cities (size, geography, demographics, etc.) • FBI data is the only comprehensive source of crime data in the United States and was used for these comparisons. • Cities between ioo,000 and 25o,000 population nationally were used for comparison purposes, a "standardized" FBI grouping. • Cities were evaluated over a so+ year period to ensure both sufficient sample size and range from which to draw conclusions. Basic Findings / Conclusions • Huntington Beach is one of the safest cities in the United States in terms of crime, easily in the "much better than average" category of comparable cities and has been so over a long period of time. • There is no discernible trend, up or down in either Violent or Property Crime categories. All annual variation has been within expected ranges, including (so far) the 2oi7 data which will be reported later by City staff. • Huntington Beach enjoys a low crime "climate," a fact that does not appear to be at risk in the near future. 2/5/2018 Violent Crime Rate G2 Mat(IW,9 249,999 Population) Average Ciry Rates)20W-2016)w/2017 Proledion gash On 6Month Data too sm I Y nm II i E� 6 om mu :mt so, ra vm ant nm xw m. mss an .1 mod.... —w.m�+..9awa. —arena. Property Crime Rate 6 2 Mat(1OQ000.269,N Population) Average Ciry Rates)2t 2016)w/201)Pm)eation gaseE On FMonth Data fin apm i a .w rem 1rm m m, ve. m su m. mat mu mat 3 z/s/zois Vloknt Ctlme 6� 8� Qom Property Crime vmm ,nm p� mm m mm m ,m mn m mr m, ,ee .. _m 4 Strategic Implications • Over the course of 2005-2016, Huntington Beach was consistently the lowest (best) quintile for crimes. • Residents of most cities would envy the historically very low crime rate in Huntington Beach. • Although there are no major alarming trends of crime, there is still police work to be done. The author recommends the City continue its crime-analysis-based, hot-spot directed tactical deployment of resources. • Although there is presently no indication of significant trend, the City should continue to monitor and evaluate for major trends and make future adjustments as needed. 2017 Part I Crimes What is UCR? • The Uniform Crime Report is a national reporting system which compares similar crimes in all 5o states in order to see national trends, etc. • Due to our population, we are mandated reporters. • Why are things different? • FBI is taking crimes and normalizing them on a national level. Part I Crimes • Homicide • Rape(new definition)[counted by number of victims) • The new definition has created many more victims across the United States.The definition includes same- sex victim and suspects that were not included before. • Aggravated Assaults(counted by numberof victims) • Unlawful assault on a person for the purpose to inflict severe bodily injury. • Robbery • The taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care or control of a person by force or threat of force. • Burglary • Shoplifts and vehicle burglaries are not counted here,dwellings only. • Larceny • The unlawful taking,carrying,leading or riding away of property from the possession of another (does not include fraud related theft). • Auto theft • The theft or attempted theft of a vehicle. • Arson • Any willful burning or attempt to bum, with or without intent to defraud. Part 1 Comparison Last Year/This Year Percent YTD 2016 YTD 2017 Difference Change Homicide 2 2 0 0.0% Rae 55 75 20 36.4% Robbery 76 95 19 26.0% Aggravated Assault 227 289 62 27.3% Burglary 650 617 -33 -5.1% Larceny 3465 3283 -182 -5.3% Auto Theft 411 385 -26 -6.3% Arson 20 32 12 60.0% Total 4906 4778 -128 -2.6% Violent Crimes 360 461 101 28.1% Property Crimes 4546 4317 -229 -5.0% Sexual Assaults/Rape • 20 more crimes • Change in FBI definition of rape makes comparisons difficult • Rape breakdown • Family, acquaintance, and social interaction involved relationships • 2 of the attempt rapes are considered stranger incidents Robberies • ig more crimes • Robbery breakdown • 34 street robberies(example: pocket-checks by force or fear) • 21 Estes robberies(this is a shoplift with force) • i7 commercial robberies(banks, fast food, etc) • iz were family or acquaintance related • ii victims of robbery involved in high risk behavior • By weapon usage • 5o involved personal weapons • 27 involved a firearm • io involved other weapons • 8 involved cutting instruments Aggravated Assaults • 62 more VICTIMS • There were 289 total victims • 122 were acquaintance or family violence • 97 were unknown suspects(bar fights,street fights,etc) • 48 were road rage/parking rage incidents • 13 were gang related • 9 were officers assaulted • By weapon usage • i14 involved other weapons • 86 involved cutting instruments • 56 involved firearms • 33 involved personal weapons 2/5/2018 Traffic • tion ��7 % Change The last time fatal accidents were this low was in 1994 with 7 Fatal Accidents i5 6 -60% InjuryAccidents 924 937 i.4% Property Damage 79� 864 9.i% Total Accidents i73i 1807 4.4% 9 Summary • Both violent and property crime in HB low compared to other cities • HB consistently in "much better than average"category • Comparable cities in US apex. 3 times violent crime rate as HB • Comparable cities in CA appx. a times the violent crime rate as HB • There will be always increases and decreases in crime, • Ups and downs are within normal range and will not threaten HB's status as one of the safest large cities in US • HBPD will continue tactical deployment of resources to address crime Questions CRIME STATISTICS - HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIFORNIA History and Overall Climate of Crime i i Prepared for the City of Huntington Beach by: Robert M. Lehner January 5, 2018 SUPPLEMENTAL COMMUNICATION Mgefing Date: �? rE Agenda Item No.° INTRODUCTION Many different factors make up a city's quality of life. Indeed, different populations include different elements in such an assessment and rank them differently in terms of importance. Annual lists proclaim "safest" cities, the best cities for raising children, the best cities for retirement, best cities to start a business, etc. Community safety is included in almost every quality of life assessment. Its importance may vary from demographic to demographic but is always weighted heavily because of its influence on so many other factors. Overall community safety includes factors other than crime but the risk of criminal victimization is an important safety consideration along with motor vehicle accidents,the prevalence of natural hazards such as fire and flood, and other factors important to the demographic. When seeking a place to live, people often ask realtors for the crime rates of various cities and/or neighborhoods within cities. A city's relative crime rate is also an important consideration for the location of businesses, both from the perspective of the risk of victimization to the business itself as well as the safety of employees and customers. A city with a high crime rate, especially one high in violent crime, is not viewed as an attractive place to live or work and will find itself at a disadvantage in attracting new business. A city with a low crime rate often commands higher real estate prices than comparably situated communities once economic factors are considered. Controlled for other economic factors, insurance rates are lower in low-crime cities. Crime is not the only factor in a safety or quality-of-life index but an important one. smartassetTM, primarily a home mortgage advice and financial services organization, annually ranks the largest 200 cities in the United States using a proprietary formula that considers violent and property crimes, motor vehicle fatalities, drug poisonings, excessive drinking, air quality index, and commuters driving to work alone. SAFEHome.org, a home security system rating organization, ranks cities using a "SafetyScore" that weights different types of crimes by a "fear factor" and also includes population density and change, youth population, unemployment, median income, and education level of the population.' There are many other rankings available based on various combinations of factors. The purpose of this project was to research the general risk of criminal victimization in Huntington Beach as compared with other like cities, identify any larger trends or patterns, and identify the city's crime "climate,"which are general prevailing conditions over a long period of time, and whether or not there is a recent change suggested by the data. Other than adjusting for population, this analysis and its resulting report does not include factors other than crime. The City of Huntington Beach (the "city") recently contracted with the author of this report to comprehensively compare its crime statistics with those of other cities in the United States, California 1 SAFEHome.org ranked Huntington Beach as among the safest cities in California at 591h among cities over 50,000 population in 2016. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 1 and Orange County, and to assess the City's overall crime climate, or generalized risk of victimization on the part of its residents and visitors. This analysis and report is intended to be mindful (and respectful) of the FBI's caution regarding the use of UCR statistics for the purpose of ranking cities.2 To the degree possible, groups of cities of similar size (rather than individual cities)were used for comparisons and over multiple years of experience (see Methodology Section for more information regarding the use of crime statistics). z United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (September 2017). Crime in the United States, 2016. Retrieved November 2017,from https://ucr.fbi.gov/?came_from=https%3A//ucr.fbi.gov/word. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 2 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Robert(Bob) Lehner started his municipal policing career in Tucson,Arizona in 1978 as a police officer. Lehner served as a police officer, detective, supervisor, and commander of various patrol, investigative, and administrative functions of this large agency of over 1,000 sworn personnel and providing policing services to over 500,000 residents. Over the course of his 25-year tenure, Lehner worked in or supervised every functional division and unit of the agency and it was in Tucson where he initially became involved in collecting, reporting, and analyzing crime statistics, working with others nationally to make crime statistics more useful to practitioners and researchers. He had been appointed to and served a number of high profile commissions and committees including as the Vice-Chairman of then- Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano's Commission to Reduce Violence to Women and the Arizona State Supreme Court's Commission to Assess the Impact of Domestic Violence in the Courts. Lehner left the agency as its senior assistant chief in December 2003 to accept a position as police chief for the City of Eugene, Oregon. In January 2004, Lehner assumed leadership of the Eugene (Oregon) Department of Police Services where he led a comprehensive effort to reform and modernize an agency in malaise and suffering through a series of misconduct scandals. Almost five years later, in October 2008, Lehner was appointed the second-ever chief of the Elk Grove (California) Police Department, barely a year into its existence. Lehner is credited with building internal systems and processes of the agency and guiding its transition from a start-up to model professional police agency. In 2015,the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics(BJS) convened a group of experts(including Lehner) in the reporting and use of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports(UCR). Knowledgeable police executives and criminal justice researchers were assembled —the Crime Indicators Working Group (CIWG)—to consider developing a new framework of crime indicators that would, to the extent possible, be based on the measures that police executives either use or want to use to measure and describe crime locally. The CIWG was asked to define the range of possible indicators that would be most helpful to all concerned and therefore would be proposed as a refinement to the index categories of the UCR program. The CIWG's recommendations were phased for implementation and remain in-progress. Upon his retirement in October 2016, Lehner was designated Police Chief Emeritus by Proclamation of the Elk Grove City Council. Later that year, he was awarded the prestigious Joseph P. MolloyAward by the California Police Chiefs Association for professionalism, leadership, energy, and commitment to the police chief profession in the State of California. Lehner and his wife, Diane, are the parents of two grown daughters, both health care professionals residing in Oregon. Upon retirement,the couple moved to Oregon to be closer to their family. Lehner holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Business Administration from the nationally-ranked Eller School of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona,Tucson. He is a nationally-certified barbecue judge and private pilot, hobbies he continues in retirement. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Both violent and property crime in Huntington Beach are low when compared with other comparable jurisdictions in the United States and California and have been for at least a decade. There have been modest increases and decreases over the years but there is no statistically discernable long-term trend, up or down. Although a relatively rare crime, murder captures the public's fear and media attention. Huntington Beach's murder counts are extremely low—and, in two of the past ten years, Huntington Beach was the largest city in the United States without a murder. In terms of the "climate" of crime in the city, Huntington Beach is consistently in the "much better than average" category for both violent and property crime in the United States and this crime climate analysis does not suggest a change or trend, up or down. There will continue to be minor increases and/or decreases year-to-year that are best addressed by consistent, standard policing practices directed toward pockets of crime. As well, there will be occasional anomalies—like California's Proposition 47—that will warrant special attention when they arise but these are not likely to displace Huntington Beach's position as one of the safest large cities in the United States. In 2017,there has been an increase in violent crime and a decrease in property crime in Huntington Beach but neither statistic is outside the bounds of expected, normal year-to-year variation. The FBI will be releasing a report later this month that will allow a better estimate of the relative magnitude of these variations for the first six months of the year. The fuller, complete annual report will be released in September. Residents of most cities would envy the remarkably low crime experience of Huntington Beach over the past decade. Any one victim of crime may justifiably feel differently but the overall risk to the community of victimization in Huntington Beach, as well as the cost of that victimization, was (and remains) much lower than most other cities. That is not to say there is not police work to be done. All cities have crime, including Huntington Beach. Lacking a need to address a negative (or unwanted) crime climate and no indication that such climate is degrading, it is recommended that the city continue its crime analysis, hot-spot directed tactical deployment of resources to address emerging pockets of crime. This has proven to be an effective overall strategy. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 4 METHODOLOGY A city's overall safety is determined through the combination of various factors, weighted in importance to a particular audience (demographic). This research and report were limited directly to the proper consideration and use of crime statistics which may then be used, in context, with other factors important to the City of Huntington Beach, its Mayor and City Council, city management, its police department, and its residents, to assess the overall safety of the community and provide a baseline for future initiatives, strategic and tactical. Crime Statistics The City of Huntington Beach keeps its own crime counts and reports them annually to the California Department of Justice (Cal DOJ) and, like all other California reporting agencies, through Cal DOJ, to the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for its annual publication Crime in the United States(CIUS). These Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are normally published approximately October First containing data for the previous calendar year. A six-month (preview) report is published in January each year for the largest (100,000+ population) cities in the United States. The UCR is the only comprehensive and reliable data set of crime statistics in the United States but has flaws. The FBI does not provide rankings and cautions against use of its data for that purpose.3 The author of this report is familiar with these issues and made a number of adjustments in how the data were used to minimize the effects of these issues from year-to-year and city-to-city. Directly comparing individual cities, or an individual city from year-to-year, is fraught with difficulty and potential error. Some cities do not report every year, while others have entire crime categories excluded any given year(or for several years) due to reporting inconsistencies with the FBI's definitions of each type of crime. The term "Uniform" in Uniform Crime Reports means the reporting definition from one city to another and from year to year over time, are the same. These definitions are dated. They were created in the 1930s and represented the most consistent use of terms at the time. With one exception,there have been only minor adjustments over the 80+year history of the UCR. In one case,the definition was reported inconsistently and incorrectly(and for so long) that that FBI officially changed the definition—that of rape in 2012 for implementation in 2013. This change was more than a minor adjustment. It made comparisons of rape statistics from before that date to after, impossible. Worse, agencies implemented the change variously from 2012 to 2015, creating an irreconcilable inconsistency. The media reported massive changes in rape rates over the past decade and most reports neglected to note the definitional change that caused them. For these reasons,the author did not include rape statistics(before or after the definition change) in this analysis in that this analysis spans the time period before, during, and after implementation of the new definition. Rape numbers have little actual effect on violent crime rates due to their overall smaller 3 ibid. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 5 numbers when compared with homicides, aggravated assaults and robberies(the other components considered "Part I Violent Crime" but most agencies experienced very significant increases in reported rapes nationwide for two largely unrelated reasons. First,the new definition of rape is significantly more inclusive of behaviors that were either not classified as rape or classified as Part 11 crimes in the past and, second, because rape is much more likely to be reported in recent years (particularly by women)than in the past. Historically, rape has been the most under-reported Part I crime. In this report, the term "violent crime" by itself and,adjusted for population,the "violent crime rate" should be read "violent crime excluding sexual assault." Thus, the Part I violent crime rates reported and analyzed in this report are the sum of reported murders, aggravated (serious) assaults, and robberies, normed for population. "Property crime" consists of the Part I crimes of burglary, larceny, and auto theft. Arson is sometimes included in a "Modified Part I"crime rate but is excluded for this analysis as it remains a relatively rare crime in terms of overall numbers and is qualitatively different than theft in most cases. Despite definitional, collection, and reporting challenges, the FBI's Part I crime counts remain the only comprehensive source of data available and were used as the basis of this analysis. Part 11 crimes and counts are even more problematic,to the point comparisons are impossible, even misleading. Only Part I crimes, by definition, were used in this analysis. When media reports crime is up or down any year after the FBI's UCR release,they are reporting Part I crime counts contained in the FBI's report. Sometimes,they do attempt to norm by population (or population grouping) recognizing that larger cities generally experience higher crime counts than smaller cities. The author does not combine violent and property crime types for the purpose of crafting an overall "Part I Crime Rate" which is sometimes reported. To do so, puts the theft of a pink flamingo lawn ornament at the same statistical significance as a murder and a city with a very low violent crime rate may appear as statistically"unsafe" if these two crime types are combined. Population When the FBI reports crime rates, it does so for large groupings of cities and as a rate per hundred thousand persons. That divisor is too large to be easily comprehensible, especially when considering small numerators such as murders in most smaller jurisdictions or in smaller groups of cities. Therefore, this report consistently uses a rate per-thousand persons throughout for convenience. The resulting statistics are, however,the same. The FBI does not report crime rates for individual jurisdictions, limiting such reports to crime counts. It does report rates for larger groupings of jurisdictions. For consistency and to make it feasible to reliably compare a city's crime counts to other cities, an individual city crime rate (crimes per thousand persons) was calculated using population numbers reported to and by the FBI. It is possible for a city's crime rate to decrease from year-to-year even if the number of reported crimes increases if the increase is smaller than the growth in population. The reverse is also true. Over long periods of time, this is a more Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 6 accurate way of determining a city's crime rate and than using crime counts alone, particularly for rapidly growing cities. It is well documented that as population increases, so does the rate of crime as well as actual crime counts. Still an imperfect measure, all other factors being equal, increased crime is associated with larger numbers of people and population density, except in the very largest cities. But larger cities represent different amenities to people. People generally know that living in a larger city means there will be a greater likelihood of crime but the risk is balanced by the amenities. As an example, living in a small town dramatically reduces one's likelihood of becoming a statistical victim of crime but greatly decreases choices for dining out within walking distance. The author attempts to capture this distinction by the creation of a "crime climate," described later in this section and report. For these reasons, it is not only important to make comparisons over a large group of cities, but a group of cities of comparable size. The FBI groups cities into population groups, as follows: Group 1: Cities over 250,000 population Group 2: Cities between 100,000 and 249,999 population Group 3: Cities between 50,000 and 99,999 population Group 4: Cities between 25,000 and 49,999 population Group 5: Cities between 10,000 and 24,999 population Group 6: Cities less than 10,000 population. Group 1 cities are further subdivided 250,000-499,999, 500,000-999,999, and over 1 million but these subdivisions were not needed and not used for this report. Other, specialized,jurisdiction groupings are also used considering all people do not live in cities and everyone lives in a state,for example. As well, some people live in cities but also attend classes on college campuses. Colleges report separately as that risk is not only different than the risk of victimization in cities but related more to student than resident population. Having been a policing practitioner in two different Group 2 cities, and a Group 1 city, the author feels that the Group 2 designation is a good group by which to compare Huntington Beach's crime rate with other comparable cities. California is sufficiently large that a further distinction—California Group 2 cities—is possible and informative. A grouping as small as Group 2 Orange County cities is statistically suspect but was still attempted for illustration.4 Smaller cities in Orange County are not sufficiently comparable to be used in this analysis. Crime Climate The FBI cautions against rankings but crime statistics are used by media groups, Chambers of Commerce, real estate groups, and many other groups for the purpose of creating lists because it is the only reliable crime data broadly available. Rather than using direct rankings, the author has analyzed all Group 2 cities in the United States from 2006 through 2016 and, for each year, determined each city's °There were only six Orange County Group 2 cities from 2005-2014 and only five from 2015 to 2016. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 7 violent and property crime rates and determined how the city's rates compared with the others in broad statistical bands(quintiles), as follows: Lowest 20 percent of cities: Much Better than Average 21-40 percent of cities: Better than Average 41-60 percent of cities: Average 61-80 percent of cities: Worse than Average Highest 81-100 percent of cities: Much Worse than Average Tracking an individual city's quintile position relative to others, over time, avoids the ranking pitfall. It also helps define a city's "crime climate." For example, a city consistently in the highest quintile group for both violent and property crime can be defined as a statistically unsafe city in terms of crime victimization. A person is statistically far more likely to be a crime victim than in a city in the lowest quintile. The exact amount differs from year-to-year and city-to-city, but is not insignificant. For example: a person living in Little Rock, Arkansas from 2006-2016 was seven times more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than a person living in Huntington Beach, California; a person living in Salt Lake City, Utah, 3.5 times more likely to be the victim of a property crime than a person living in Huntington Beach during the same period of time. A city's crime climate consists of its relative position, over time, compared with other cities of comparable size. A single (or occasional)foray from the Much Better than Average quintile to the Better than Average Quintile does not change this city's overall good crime climate. A trend, over time, that continues trending upward through a quintile and into the next suggests strongly that some factor has significantly changed the crime climate (for the worse) in such a city. The strategies used by a police department to address such a trend must be different than those of a city finding itself consistently in a high quintile and wanting to improve that fact. Crime climate change for a city is not unlike changing the culture of a large, complex organization — difficult, time consuming, and expensive. These "strategic" changes are unlike "tactical" changes that are less challenging, faster to implement, and not as expensive as strategic change. It is important to note that policing tactics intended to bring about a crime climate (strategic) change are different than those used by a city to address emerging crime issues (intra-year spikes) which also affect the quality of life of neighborhoods even though they may not change a city's overall crime rate (or climate) much if at all. Anti-property crime strategies would be the best use of resources, long-term, to address a high property crime climate. A city with a high violent crime climate must use a very different long-term strategy to be successful. As a preview to the findings in this report, Huntington Beach is consistently in the "much better than average" quintiles in both violent and property crime over at least a decade. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 8 HISTORY OF CRIME IN HUNTINGTON BEACH Violent Crime Violent crime in Huntington Beach is consistently low when compared with other comparable jurisdictions in the United States and California. Chart 1 shows this relative relationship over time. Violent Crime Rate G2 Cities (100,000-249,999 Population) Average City Rates (2005 - 2016) zoo 6.00 c 0 5.00 0 0 a 4.00 m 0 0 F 3.00 a o. E 2.00 v V 1.00 0.00 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 —California U.S. —Huntington Beach —Orange County Chart 1. Violent Crime Rates Over Time Historically, Huntington Beach shares this distinction with other cities in Orange County. There have been modest increases and decreases over the years but the Violent Crime rate in Orange County and Huntington Beach consistently hovers around two violent crimes per thousand residents (2.2 and 1.8 crimes/thousand respectively),about one-third that of the average Group 2 city in the United States (5.2 crimes/thousand), and less than comparable cities in California (4.1 crimes/thousand). There is no statistically discernable long-term trend, up or down. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 9 There has been a noticeable increase in violent crime counts in Huntington Beach during the first six months of 2017 when compared with 2016 but not outside of the expected range sufficiently to suggest anything other than normal year-to-year variation when considered over time. The FBI will release its Semi-annual Report in January 2018 which contains comparable six-month data for all reporting jurisdictions in the United States for cities over 100,000 population. The author(of this report) does not expect either the semi-annual release or the final 2017 CIUS report (released approximately October 1, 2018 for all jurisdictions) will change his overall conclusion regarding the climate or trend of violent crime in Huntington Beach, including consideration of the early 2017 increase. Homicides Homicides in Huntington Beach are extraordinarily rare and worthy of special mention. In 2007 and 2015, Huntington Beach was the largest city in the entire United States without a murder. Over a twelve-year period (2005-2016) the average number of murders in Huntington Beach, was two. Every homicide is a tragedy for the victim and his/her family but homicides are statistically a fact in large cities and Huntington Beach has a remarkably low number. Although no other crime counts are as low as homicide, the low number of murders illustrates how easily one can draw conclusions about an increase (or decrease)from year-to-year. In 2011, Huntington Beach reported four murders (the highest single year in a decade) and a doubling(100 percent) increase over the previous year. When looked at in isolation, the increase (as a percentage) is alarmingly large but, looked at in the course of the overall history of Huntington Beach,very much within range of the overall history and crime climate of the city. Even at the decade high in terms of numbers of murders, Huntington Beach was still in the best-thirty percent of large cities in the United States, both the FBI's Group 2 cities (100,000—250,000 population), and all cities over 100,000 population. Cities with low crime counts will experience larger year-to-year percentage variations simply due to the low numbers of crime counts involved. For example, from 2014 to 2015, robberies in Huntington Beach increased by 17 crimes, from 100 to 117, an increase of 17 percent. From 2012-2013, robberies in Little Rock, Arkansas increased by 137 robberies, eight times the number of additional crimes in Huntington Beach. The year-to-year percentage increases between the two cities were identical —17 percent. Context is important. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 10 PROPERTY CRIME IN HUNTINGTON BEACH Property crime in Huntington Beach is also relatively low and has been, historically. Many cities that enjoy lower violent crime rates suffer much higher property crime rates and, along with them,the irony of reporting that people feel safe strolling their neighborhoods, even at night, but make sure their houses and cars are securely locked before they leave. This is an example of how crime climate affects the behavior of residents in a city. Like violent crime, property crime in Orange County and Huntington Beach has been relatively flat for a decade,tracking about 23 crimes per thousand population (24.2 crimes/thousand and 23.3 crimes/thousand, respectively), less than the rest of the state (30.9 crimes/thousand) and almost half that comparably-sized jurisdictions in the United States as a whole (37.8 crimes/thousand). Chart 2 depicts this graphically. Property Crime Rate G2 Cities (100,000-249,999 Population) Average City Rates (2005 - 2016) 50.00 45.00 40.00 0 35.00 0. 0 30.00 c n 0 25.00 A z J ~ 20.00 `w o. y 15.00 E U` 10.00 5.00 0.00 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 —California U.S. —Huntington Beach Orange County Chart 2. Property Crime Rates Over Time As was the case with violent crime, property crime in Huntington Beach shows no discernable trend, up or down,over time with the exception of a single-year spike from 2014 to 2015 associated with the Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 11 implementation of Proposition 47 in California. Proposition 47's effects were felt state-wide and more pronounced in some jurisdictions. Cities in Orange County were among those the most significantly affected. The sudden increase in property crime interrupted the long period of decline in prior years. This increase was not experienced by the rest of the United States which continued its decades long decline. Generally, cities with larger Proposition 47 increases in 2015, experienced larger decreases in 2016. This proved to be the case both in Huntington Beach and Orange County as a whole,though not to pre- Proposition 47 levels. The author expects this decrease to continue into 2017 where it will likely level off at pre-Proposition 47 levels. In 2017 to-date, Huntington Beach has experienced a minor overall decrease in reported property crime. As was the case for violent crime, not outside of expected range sufficiently to suggest anything other than normal year-to-year variation when considered over time. The FBI's six-month report will also contain property crime counts for the first six months of 2017 over 2016. At that time, it will be possible to estimate whether these changes are within expected ranges. The author estimates these will be within expected ranges. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 12 CRIME CLIMATE To aid cities in understanding their own crime statistics and what they mean relative to other cities and a community's overall safety, the author has developed a measure of a city's"crime climate" relative to other, comparable, cities. This technique mitigates issues of UCR reporting and rankings by analyzing large groups of cities, with many millions of residents, over long periods of time. i In purely weather terms, climate is the statistics of weather over long periods of time, in particular geographic areas of the earth. Climate is described by elements of weather: temperature, humidity, precipitation, etc. Climate captures the essence of the ability to compare crime in cities without compromising statistical integrity. Just because it rains in the Sahara does not mean it is no longer a desert. The prevailing conditions are arid and its population, human and natural, are strongly influenced by the prevailing high temperatures, low humidity and infrequent rainfall. Crime is the weather equivalent of precipitation—causes vary but it is more likely to fall in a particular place. Over time, as certain places experience statistically more crime, it becomes expected to a degree and magnitude. Residents take different measures in response to a climate predisposed to precipitation depending on whether it is cold (ice and snow) or warm (rain) and those measures are different depending on the likelihood of precipitation at all. Residents of high property crime climates often invest in security and alarm systems for their cars and homes. Residents of high violent crime climates are cautious about going to areas where gangs are known to gather, something a security system cannot mitigate. The best personal prevention against violent crime is avoiding association with gangs and drugs and people who engage in those lifestyles. The best personal prevention against property crime is target hardening. One can insure (financially)for property crime losses, one cannot insure for violent crime victimization. For this report, all FBI Group 2 cities in the United States, those with populations from 100,000 to 249,999 persons in any reporting year, were aggregated for each year from 2005 through 2016. The number of cities in the group varied by year from 185 to 215, as cities grew into and out of the defined population range. The violent and property crime rates were determined for each city, each year and divided into five 20 percent quintiles. Cities in the middle 20 percent, plus or minus ten percent of the median city of the group, are characterized as "average" (Q3 for Third Quintile). The two 20-percent ranges with lower (better) rates are characterized as "better than average" (Q2) and "much better than average" (Q1). The two 20-percent ranges with greater(worse) rates are characterized as "worse than average" and "much worse than average." These groupings were then charted (Chart 3)for each year from 2005 through 2016 and a line (representing Huntington Beach's reported crime) and shows Huntington Beach's relative position in these groupings over time. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 13 Violent Crime 45.00 40.00 35.00 0 30.00 a 0 0 25.00 0 C 0 w 20.00 a v E 15.00 10.00 5.00 0.00 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2 2013 2014 2015 2016 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 —Huntington Beach Chart 3.Violent Crime,Quintiles over Time This chart is helpful for analysis because it shows another interesting characteristic of each quintile grouping. The vertical axis is not scaled by number of agencies. Shown in that manner, each quintile group would occupy the same height in an individual year stack and each stack would be the same (100 percent) height. The vertical axis is the actual violent crime rate that represents the value at which each quintile (20 percent of agencies each) begins and ends, each year. The lower(better)the quintile,the more confined the range is. To occupy one of the lower(better than average) quintiles, requires a much smaller range of crime. It may be statistically simple to count as"better than average" but,to remain there over time, a city's violent crime rate must remain statistically low,year-after-year, in a relatively tight range. Huntington Beach has a low violent crime climate, much lower than most cities. The overall height of the stack in any given year over Huntington Beach's line shows not only that the city is relatively low, but how low in terms of magnitude and the sheer amount of crime happening in other cities when compared with Huntington Beach. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 14 As was the case with the violent crime history chart (Chart 1), Chart 3 also would show a trend or change overtime and, more importantly, a trend of changing crime conditions (climate)that would warrant strategic intervention. There is no discernable trend. Over the course of 2005-2016, Huntington Beach was consistently in the lowest(best) quintile of violent crime, averaging 1.82 crimes per thousand population. 2.62 crimes per thousand is the average separation between Q1 and Q2. Huntington Beach has been and remains"much better than average' with respect to violent crime when compared with other cities. In 2016, the most recent full, single year for which data are available Huntington Beach's rate was 1.50 crimes per thousand. Property Crime 300.00 250.00 c 0 200.00 0 0 a 0 0 150.00 v o N d E 100.00 - u 50.00 0.00 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2 2013 2014 2015 2016 Series8 - QS 02 Q3 Q4 Q5 —Huntington Beach Chart 4. Property Crime Climate Chart 4 is the same presentation but for property crimes. Like violent crime, Huntington Beach enjoys a low property crime climate, much lower than most cities. There is no discernable trend or changeover time and no trend of changing crime conditions(climate)that would warrant strategic attention. Over the course of 2005-2016, Huntington Beach was consistently in the lowest(best) quintile of property crime, averaging 23.29 crimes per thousand population per year. 27.16 crimes per thousand is the average separation between Q1 and Q2. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 15 Huntington Beach has been and remains "much better than average" with respect to property crime when compared with other cities. In 2016,the most recent full, single year for which data are available Huntington Beach's rate was 22.18 crimes per thousand. STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS Residents of most cities would envy the low crime experience of Huntington Beach over the past decade. Any one victim of crime may justifiably feel differently but the overall risk to the community of victimization in Huntington Beach, as well as the cost of that victimization, was(and remains) much lower than most other cities. That is not to say there is not police work to be done. All cities have crime, including Huntington Beach. Lacking a need to address a negative (or unwanted) crime climate and no indication that such climate is degrading, the author recommends that the city continue its crime analysis, hot-spot directed tactical deployment of resources to address emerging pockets of crime. There is no basis upon which to suggest that a strategic re-direction of resources or methods is warranted. If the city's experience were "average" and policymakers declared a strategic goal to be consistently"better than average"that would require a different, and expensive, allocation of resources and strategies, over time, to accomplish. Simple crime analysis-based tactical deployments may be successful in addressing minor variations of criminal behavior and patterns, but will not change a city's crime climate over time. In Huntington Beach's case, continued emphasis on tactical deployments will, over time, keep the city in its enviable position as one of the safest large cities in the United States. Crime Statistics, Huntington Beach, Page 16 Esparza, Patty From: Estanislau, Robin Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2018 9:48 AM To: Richardson Gray Cc: Dombo, Johanna; Harper, Gloria; Esparza, Patty Subject: RE: Surf City Pipeline; Closed Request#31877 [6530326665326234j Good morning Mr. Gray, i apologize for the missed communication, but unfortunately our department shows no receipt of the communication you transmitted to the City Council yesterday morning via Pipeline. Since the crime rate presentation was cancelled last night, we will not create a record for it until a presentation is made. A Strategic Planning Workshop has been scheduled for February 13, Would you like this communication to be included as part of that meeting? Otherwise, I can keep this record in the pending file for the crime rate presentation which should take place in the very near future. Robin Estanislau, CMC, City Clerk City of Huntington Beach 714-536-5405 J Please consider the HB City Clerk's office for your passport needs! From: Richardson Gray [mai Ito:richardson.gray0yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2018 7:34 AM To: Estanislau, Robin Subject: Fw: Surf City Pipeline: Closed Request # 31877 [6530326665326234] Dear City Clerk Robin Estanislau: Over the weekend, I sent this email to all seven City Council Members for yesterday's cancelled Study Session Presentation on Crime Statistics. I noticed that this email of mine did not get announced or placed in the folder last night as a supplemental communication. Could you please make sure that my email below goes to all seven City Council Members,and confirm this in a brief email reply to me? I would like for the Council to consider my request as a part of their Strategic Plan meeting in February. Thank you for your help. Richardson Gray 415 Townsquare Lane#208 Huntington Beach,CA 92648 714-348-1928(cell) -----Forwarded Message----- From:Surf City Pipeline<surfcitya�?.user.govoutreach.com> To:"rfchardson.grayaayahoo.com"<richardson.arayna.yahoo.com> Sent:Tuesday,January 16, 2018,8:29:16 AM PST Subject:Surf City Pipeline: Closed Request#31877[6530326665326234] ---If replying by email,enter your reply above this line- --Hs -2 1- Item 2. - I Dear Richardson, Your request#31877 has been resolved with the resolution: Thank you for taking the time to send your thoughts to the City Council. A copy of your comments has been forwarded to the City Clerk to be included in the record on this item. Thank you very much for writing. Sincerely, Johanna Dombo Executive Assistant This is in reference to the Problem on City Council-Agenda&Public Hearing Comments you submitted on 01/15/2018 5:20 PM Description: Dear Council Members, I have owned my home in our Downtown neighborhood for more than ten years. During that time, including the most recent years,the crime rates in the two major police reporting districts for Downtown Main Street have been a substantial multiple of the Citywide average. Although Police Chief Handy has made great strides in improving the public safety of Downtown Main Street,the crime rates in this area are still unacceptably high. One district has the worse crime rates in the City by far,and the second district is almost as bad. As well, Police Chief Handy has made solid progress in trying to reduce DUl accidents throughout the City. Even so, Huntington Beach continues to have one of the worst DUI accident rates for midsize cities in the entire state. As former Police Chief Small stated it, DUI accidents are our City's number one public safety problem. For these reasons, I urge you to include two new items in the Public Safety portion of the City's Strategic Plan. The first item should address Downtown Main Street's disproportionate share of crimes in our City. And the second item should address the continuing epidemic of DUI accidents throughout all of Huntington Beach. Thank you for considering my views. Richardson Gray 415 Townsquare Lane#208 Huntington Beach, CA 92648 714-348-1928(cell) richardson.gray(oyahoo.com We are committed to providing you the best service we can. We would appreciate you filling out an online survey on how this request was handled. You can fill out the online survey by going to: <hh�://user.GovOutreach.com/s u rfcity/survey.ph p?cid=3584072&access=6530326665326234> You may reply to this email to send a response or you can view this request online at: <htti)://user.GovOutreach.com/surfcity/case.php?id=3584072&access=6530326665326234> 2 Item 2. - 2 HB -22-