Information Regarding Article About "Most Dangerous" Cities In Oregon ~ It was "FAKE NEWS"
The following News Release from the Roseburg Police Department was necessary due to a “Fake News” story published by “Lawnstarter.” titled, “Report: Oregon 16 Most Dangerous State in the US.”
A quick click of the link connects to the “Lawnstater” page where there is a chart for people who want to look up the crime rate in their city. The chart rates the City of Roseburg as the top most dangerous city in Oregon and that is a bunch of nonsense. Anyone who has lived in OR for anytime knows there are much more dangerous cities than Roseburg.
In an excerpt, the researchers explain their methodology:
Methodology
For LawnStarter to determine both the most dangerous and the safest states to live, we used FBI crime statistics, and then weighted them for individual states and cities. The FBI collects crime statistics from both state and city police departments. The FBI collects data on eight crimes:
Here is a link to the original article that was reported by KOIN TV along with other news outlets.
The only problem with their research is easily located in this excerpt from the FBI Press Release:
Caution Against Ranking
When the FBI publishes crime data via its UCR Program, some entities use the information to compile rankings of cities and counties. Such rankings, however, do not provide insight into the numerous variables that shape crime in a given town, city, county, state, tribal area, or region. These rankings lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that can create misleading perceptions that adversely affect communities and their residents. Only through careful study and analyses into the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction can data users create valid assessments of crime. The data user is, therefore, cautioned against comparing statistical data of individual reporting units from cities, metropolitan areas, states, or colleges or universities solely on the basis of their population or student enrollment.
Good Job for the Roseburg Police Department for defending their service, good for them.
It should have been obvious to the so-called researchers that with all their calculations they still would never get the correct conclusion, therefore making this article from “Lawnstarter” a fine example of “FAKE NEWS.”…Rob T.
News Release from Roseburg Police Dept.
January 24th, 2020 2:37 PM
Recently there was an article published in several Oregon media outlets that indicated the City of Roseburg is the, "Most Dangerous," city in Oregon. As with any report that involves numbers and percentages, oftentimes those numbers can be presented to support something, or make it appear unfavorable. In this instance those numbers and percentages were taken at face value, without clear explanation. The article is referring to crime statistics that were reported to the FBI by Oregon law enforcement agencies. Those crime statistics are broken down into several different crime categories, and they are also totaled. Based on the numbers reported by an agency there is a determined, "crime index" and a "crime rate", for that jurisdiction.
The Roseburg Police Department takes pride in the fact that we respond to every call for service - thus, taking reports for crimes that many other agencies do not. For example, there are many agencies around the State that do not respond to calls for minor thefts, car break-ins, or vandalism. Additionally, some agencies will refer victims to an online reporting system, potentially making victims feel, "why bother" making a report if an Officer isn't going to investigate it. Ultimately, not responding to, or not taking reports on minor crimes can lead to an inaccurate picture of crime for a particular jurisdiction, especially if it is based on crime data. We at the Roseburg Police Department knew that accurate record keeping could potentially lead to something like this, but we feel responding to all of our communities’ requests for service, and accurately documenting crimes that have occurred in our jurisdiction is the appropriate way to conduct our business. We will continue to operate in this manner, despite the possibility of this making it appear our crime statistics are higher.
The chart in the published article is what produced the rankings that were released. If you look at that article and the attached chart(s) you will see our "Larceny (theft)", "Property Crime (vandalism, etc.)" and "Burglary" rates are higher than the State and U.S. averages. Those categories are the ones that contain petty thefts, theft from motor vehicles, criminal mischiefs, theft from unoccupied buildings, etc. that many agencies don't investigate, thus giving the appearance that their crime rates are lower. Conversely, our rates for most major person crimes are all lower than the U.S. average and only one is higher than the State average. Significantly, our violent crime rate is almost a full point lower than the State of Oregon average and almost 2 points lower than the U.S. average.
We felt it was necessary to send this out to educate the community and media as to how these rates and numbers are created, and what it really means. If anyone has any questions about this, please feel free to contact us.
If you would like to see the article and charts you can go to the following link: https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/report-oregon-16th-most-dangerous-state-in-u-s/
Contact Info:
Sergeant Jeff Eichenbusch
Public Information Officer
Roseburg Police Department
jeichenbusch@cityofroseburg.org
700 SE Douglas Avenue
Roseburg, OR 97470
(541) 492-6760 ext. 6781