The FBI has created a new annual crime report that provides a more in-depth look at crime in the United States and it’s one Odessa Police Chief Mike Gerke believes will be a much more useful tool than the old Uniform Crime Report.
The URC only collected data on eight categories of crimes, but the National Incident-Based Reporting System collects data on 24 crime categories, breaking each one down into 52 specific crimes.
“NIBRS is intended as an intel product. It breaks down the offenses a lot more specifically than UCR does,” Gerke said. “The UCR has very few categories that you try to lump everything into using their rules and NIBRS has far more categories that everything fits into a lot better.”
Having more specific numbers will help agencies create better strategies, Gerke said.
“You can now use those stats to say ‘Hey this is what we need to focus on,’ because when you see a category like larceny, that could be 900 different things. Just from those stats you don’t know if you need to focus on shoplifters or car burglars,” Gerke said.
The FBI began requiring law enforcement agencies to report their stats using NIBRS beginning in January 2021.
According to the NIBRS report released by OPD last week, homicides fell from 13 in 2020 to nine in 2021 and auto thefts dropped to 371 from 467, Gerke said.
Burglaries, which had jumped 25% from 469 in 2019 to 584 in 2020 due to criminals taking advantage of empty businesses during the COVID lockdown, dropped to 508 last year, Gerke said.
In fact, crime appears to be down in general, but a direct comparison is difficult to make in many of the categories simply because of the differences between the UCR and NIBRS systems, he said.
For example, crimes counted as “larcenies” fell from 2,122 to 1,971 and aggravated assaults fell from 788 to 478.
“But again, that’s one of those things that’s not technically probably absolutely true because the numbers just don’t match up,” Gerke said. “It’s the same thing with rape, it’s down from 107 to 61, but again, those numbers don’t match up correctly. They just don’t count numbers the same. When you talk about UCR rapes, it’s not just sexual assault, it was the molestations, it’s all of those things lumped into one.”
Although pleased the numbers appear to be trending downward, Gerke said they’re still too high.
His department and residents have a lot of work to do, he said.
“There are some things I’d love for the community to do for us. We still see a lot of auto burglaries where the car doors are unlocked, where valuables are left in the car,” Gerke said. “We’d absolutely appreciate the citizens locking their cars at night and taking their valuables out, particularly guns, we still have a number of guns that get stolen in auto burglaries out of unlocked cars.”
In addition, people are still having their cars stolen with the keys inside, he said.
On the positive side, Gerke said he is thankful for programs like CrimeStoppers and Neighborhood Watch.
“I think we all need to get back to that time where neighbors looked out for each other,” Gerke said. “If something suspicious is going on in the neighborhood you call each other, you call the police, you come together to see what you can do to solve those issues. You knew your neighbors. I think we need to get back to that, where we all talk and we all know each other. It was just a better time and I think we can get back to some of that.”
It’s the department’s mission to bring crime stats down and make Odessa safer and to that end, Gerke said they are constantly looking for ways to accomplish that.
For example, when violent crimes were up a few years ago, the decision was made to prosecute many of the offenders in federal court where the cases moved along quicker.
“Also, we’ve kind of transitioned to intelligence-led policing, which is simply policing by the data. We try to put officers where the crimes are occurring and we keep up with those stats on a weekly basis,” Gerke said. “We look for those areas where crimes are occurring and we gather intel to find those prolific offenders.
I think we all know it’s just a small number of citizens that cause the vast majority of our issues…We focus now on identifying those individuals and dealing with that problem.”
Technology is also being used more frequently, especially because the department has 35-40 empty positions right now, he said.
“Luckily we’ve been able to, over the last few years, purchase some technology that has helped close that gap and be force multipliers,” Gerke said. “We’ve got a small camera network around town now that’s helped with surveillance, we’ve got some license plate readers around town now that have helped us find some bad guys, stolen cars, that kind of thing.”
In addition, Gerke said they’ve created a bridge with the Midland Police Department so officers can see OPD’s records management system and OPD officers can see theirs. The OPD is also part of the National Integrated Ballistic Imaging Network, which allows the department to process shell casings so they can link shell casings to certain guns and certain shootings.
“Everything we’re doing we’re sharing with our neighbors, with the Ector County Sheriff’s Office, Midland County Sheriff’s Office and with the Midland Police Department because we understand that crime is regional. Criminals just do not stay in one place,” Gerke said.
