Thread: Arpaio Announces Drop In Homicide Rate

Arpaio announces drop in homicide rate
Ryan Gabrielson, Tribune Last updated: January 16, 2009 - 5:08PM





Sheriff Joe Arpaio
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office announced Thursday that homicide in its jurisdiction dropped by 28 percent in 2008. In 2007, the sheriff's office documented 32 murders, but only 23 were recorded last year.

MCSO serves more than 300,000 residents, primarily those living in small towns and the county's rural stretches. Cities that have their own police departments are not included in the crime statistics, though they are within the sheriff's jurisdiction.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, in a press release announcing the declining homicide rate, said the improvement was "partially" due to the office's illegal-immigration operations.

The release did not articulate how illegal-immigration enforcement has benefited general public safety.

A Tribune investigation last year found that during 2006 and 2007 - the first two years that the sheriff's office conducted operations targeting illegal immigrants - emergency response times slowed dramatically and arrest rates plummeted. The sheriff's office also reported steep increases in homicide, robbery and aggravated assault during that span.

In recent years, the newspaper found that the sheriff's office has not always entered all cases into its electronic record-keeping system.

"Due to a lack of administrative staff, many areas of the office do not have complete ... data. Therefore, the data for the Criminal Investigations Bureau is not considered accurate," the sheriff's office reported from 2004 through 2007 to Maricopa County's Office of Management and Budget.

However, a sheriff's office spokeswoman said that the homicide data released this week are accurate.

"The figures that we gave you are absolutely reliable," said MCSO spokeswoman Lisa Allen.

Deputy Chief Scott Freeman, a top official in MCSO's central investigations division who oversees data entry, could not be reached for comment Friday.

The homicide data comes from figures provided to the FBI, which includes them in the agency's annual volume, "Crime in the United States."





http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/134183

In spite of an increase in crime...just about every major city claimes it's less. Most are Dem run cities and most have a real decrease in law enforcement.....so what's true?