A police union president is calling into question the validity of Mesa’s place on a recent magazine list honoring what are supposedly America’s safest cities to live in.
Ryan Russell, president of the Mesa Police Association, voiced concerns over the list — released last week by Forbes Magazine with the East Valley’s largest city coming in as the seventh-safest city in the United States — because it contains crime statistics that are nearly three years old and the ranking was based on limited areas, such as traffic fatality rates and violent crimes for cities with a population of more than 250,000.
Plano, Texas, a short drive north from Dallas, was ranked as the nation’s safest city to live in. The Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nev. was second and Honolulu third. The rankings were based on violent crime rates reported by the FBI’s uniform crime statistics and traffic fatality rates reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety administration.
Russell, who is a sergeant in Mesa’s gang unit and also has seen domestic violence incidents increase in the city and a steady flow of gang-related activity, told the Tribune that he was surprised Mesa made the list amid its budget cuts and personnel reductions through attrition in recent years. The Mesa Police Department peaked with 855 uniformed officers on the streets between 2005 to 2008, but now is below 770, according to Russell.
“We need to have Forbes Magazine come out here and ride with our gang unit,” Russell said. “The two areas that Forbes used to rank the cities are just a small piece of the pie. I can understand why they figure in traffic fatalities because that is a vital component to public safety. I think the ranking does speak volumes as to how hard our officers are working.”
By comparison, the gang unit in which Russell is a supervisor of, peaked at 22 detectives and 16 sergeants during 2008 and 2009, but now is at 16 detectives and three sergeants.
Incident response times also increased by 12 to 14 percent since 2009, translating from 3.75 minutes per call to 4.05 minutes today.
Based on crime statistics on cityrating.com, Mesa crime statistics reported an overall downward trend in crime based on data spanning 11 years with violent crime decreasing and property crime decreasing. Based on this trend, the crime rate in Mesa for 2011 is expected to be lower than in 2009.
The city’s violent crime rate for Mesa in 2009 was 1.08 percent lower than the national violent crime rate average, while the city property crime rate in Mesa was higher than the national property crime rate average by 13.08 percent.
In 2009 the city violent crime rate in Mesa was higher than the violent crime rate in Arizona by 4.04 percent and the city property crime rate in Mesa was lower than the property crime rate in Arizona by 3.47 percent, according to the statistics.
In 2009, there were 14 homicides, 123 rapes and 1,303 motor vehicle thefts and 611 robberies reported in Mesa. However, in 2011, all of those categories were projected to see increases by the end of the year.
The crimes projected to slightly drop during 2011 were burglaries, larceny and theft, property crime and arson.
Russell called the rankings an “anomoly.”
“Usually, during hard economic times, crimes goes up. We have seen some violent crimes go down, but others go up,” he said.
“The scope (Forbes) looked at is very small,” Russell added. “Forbes Magazine needs to expand its scope and run the whole gamut of crimes. The individual who has their home or car burglarized, those are the people who look at whether Mesa is the seventh-safest city.”
The safest cities ranking list was compiled by Beth Greenfield, a contributor to Forbes Magazine. Attempts to reach Greenfield for comment have been unsuccessful.
Contact writer: (480) 898-6533 or msakal@evtrib.com
Dale Whiting posted at 8:52 am on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Russell,
Shame on you for knocking on, then exposing, one of your elected official's planks for re-election. Perhaps Bill Richardson can shed further light on this fraud.
billrichardson posted at 10:36 am on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Here is a link to the Arizona Crime Analysts Association web page and crime statistics from 2010 and FY 09-10. Mesa is well below crime in Glendale, Phoenix and Tempe. It's interesting to me that crime is down everywhere, but Tempe continues to have the highest crime rate in the East Valley even though they have half as many police officers as Mesa with one-third the population and the Sinaloa Drug Cartel appears to have set up shop. At least the Sinaloans aren't calling Mesa home.
http://www.aacaonline.org/2010%20Phoenix%20Metro%20Area%20Crime%20Summary.pdf
billrichardson posted at 10:37 am on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Crime Analysts webpage link.
http://www.aacaonline.org/valleycrimes.html
downtownresident posted at 11:49 am on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
This is clearly a self serving, greedy attitude. The same cry we hear whenever there's an election. I remember when they were whining because they didn't get paid for getting dressed.
Don't get me wrong, cops do a dangerous, hard job and I couldn't do it, but let's not cry wolf whenever we see an opening.
Russel may be working a desk job for his comments.
billrichardson posted at 12:59 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Here's a link to an old column about the MPA's wanting to get overtime pay to get dressed for work. When it was all said and done it cost Mesa taxpayers almost $350,000 to shut down the union's frivolous lawsuit. $350,000 would have paid the first year salary for seven new police officers.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/opinion/article_76109c6e-a386-5db2-a346-83414f2ddde5.html
Juggernaut8000 posted at 1:53 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
Whoever did this study clearly has not been to this large city. Mesa has approximately a dozen murders per year, countless rapes, assaults and fatal car collisions.
Illegals roam the streets in troops and the police do nothing about it. Just today, a home invasion led to the death of a young mother...real safe place Forbes.
Masterrogue666 posted at 9:18 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
First, let me state that you can prove anything you want with statistics, depending how the data is gathered. Second, due to CLOSE PROXIMITY of cities to one another, criminals could easily "work" in one city, and live in another, which would further decrease the accuracy of any information. Third, if you look carefully at the link provided by billrichardson, there's the following statement:
"The crime and calls for service information, provided by the crime analysis units/planning units in each agency, was compiled by the Tempe Police Department Crime Analysis Unit. This report is based on Uniform Crime
Reporting (UCR) criteria which are not equivalent to Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) statistics and therefore this data cannot be directly compared to ARS reports. Under the hierarchy rule of UCR, only the most severe offense
of an incident is counted. Therefore, for example, burglary offenses are only counted where the burglary is the most severe offense committed in the incident. The above tables include dispatched/callback calls for service only.
U.S. Census Bureau official population estimates were used. Any incidents that had missing or incorrect information may not be properly depicted in this report.
*Numbers are preliminary and are subject to change ^Chandler, Glendale, Maricopa, Mesa, Phoenix, Tempe, and Tucson CFS data includes both citizen and officer-generated calls."
Also, once should compare information for the entire FISCAL YEAR. Bill's link is not to the entire fiscal year, so I checked that information as well. I noticed, however, that when you compare Bill's link page, and the fiscal year page (if you check the second link Bill provided, and look for it, you'll find it), some cities are listed, and others are not. So, the data provided isn't the most accurate IMHO, but I'll use it in any event.
The premise of the entire article is that Mesa IS NOT one of the safest cities in Arizona. The data proves that if you know what to look for. The best comparison would be crime percentage (Overall, Personal, or Property) averaged over the population of the city.
I've went until Mesa was listed in each case. The last time I tried to create a table in this comment box, it didn't work. Here's the stats. I'll list overall first, Persons, then Property, starting with the worse city by overall listing.
Non-Fiscal Info:
Tucson- Overall-1 69.7; Persons-1 6.4; Property-1 63.3
Glendale- Overall-2 64.3; Persons-4 4.3; Property-2 60.1
Tempe- Overall-3 57.5; Persons-3 4.8; Property-3 52.7
Phoenix- Overall-4 48.2; Persons-2 5.5; Property-4 42.7
Mesa- Overall-5 38.1; Persons-5 4.1; Property-5 34.0
Fiscal Year Data:
Glendale- Overall-1 59.3; Persons-4 4.6; Property-1 59.3
Tucson- Overall-2 58.1; Persons-1 6.1; Property-2 52.0
Avondale- Overall-3 55.1; Persons-6 3.3; Property-3 51.8 (Not listed in prior)
Tempe- Overall-4 54.2; Persons-3 4.8; Property-4 49.4
Phoenix- Overall-5 45.5; Persons-2 5.1; Property-5 40.4
Mesa- Overall-6 37.8; Persons-5 4.1; Property-6 33.7
So, Mesa is about the 5th WORST CHOICE. The two best are: Surprise or Gilbert, depending on which data you wish to judge by.
As for why Tempe's got so much crime? I think the answer is simple, and am surprised that Bill hadn't considered it- Customers. Tempe is a party town mostly due to ASU. Parties usually mean drugs, legal or otherwise. Drugs usually increase crime, either person or property. If you are looking for fun, it's easy to get to Tempe (Nice central location), which means people come from OUTSIDE Tempe's city limits, commit a crime(s), and go home (remember I mentioned this earlier). It's not rocket science.
As for the cartel moving in (if one ignores the direct customer base), imagine if 1 student in 1,000 was willing to work as a "mule" during certain times of the year (or even all year long). Considering ASU has over 56,000 undergraduates, that 56 pipelines all over the USA. Granted that's just guess work on my part, but it certainly can be possible.
Masterrogue666 posted at 10:04 pm on Wed, Jan 4, 2012.
I almost forgot to mention: Anyone notice how HIGH Tucson ranks? It's an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT oasis, and close to the "secure" border. By the way, King Obama has land in the area to sell if you are interested.....
Juggernaut8000 posted at 6:00 pm on Thu, Jan 5, 2012.
All I have to say about Tucson is napalm.