Crime rates of undocumented immigrants spark debate between lawmakers, police chief
By Jennifer Stagg



Published: Monday, May 3, 2010 9:19 p.m. MDT
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SALT LAKE CITY — In the debate over tougher immigration laws in Utah, a lot of statistics are thrown around regarding how much crime undocumented immigrants commit.

Sunday morning on KSL's Sunday Edition, Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, cited numbers showing a huge amount of crime by those of Hispanic ethnicity. The statistic compares homicide arrest rates in the capital city in 2008, but some say it's all about how you interpret the numbers.

"From the Bureau of Criminal Identification — and these are hard statistics — in Salt Lake City, Chief (Chris) Burbank's jurisdiction, 81 percent of the homicides, when you have a recorded ethnicity, are committed by Hispanics," Wimmer told KSL-TV.

Video, related stories and links can be found at KSL.com.

The statistics Wimmer cited are widely circulated among proponents of tougher immigration laws.

Wimmer said he received the figures from Rep. Chris Herrod, R-Provo, who got the numbers from Utah's Bureau of Criminal Identification.

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According to the Bureau of Criminal Identification statistics for 2008 in Salt Lake City, there were 18 arrests for various types of homicide. Of those, nine arrests were of suspects described as Hispanic, two were non-Hispanic and seven were of an unknown ethnicity.

Herrod says he discarded arrests in the "unknown" category because there was no way to tell what ethnicity they were, and that's how he came up with the 81 percent.

But Burbank says that line of thought is flawed.

"To throw out statistics because it's listed as other or unidentified as invalid, well that throws off your whole statistical balance of measure," the Salt Lake City police chief said. "To say that 81 percent, or any number, it's not accurate."

Burbank said his department's police reports show 37 percent of homicide arrests in 2008 were Hispanics, and that number dropped to 33 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, Hispanics make up about 20 percent of the city's population.

"It's a scare tactic to throw out there and say one population is more criminal. That is not the case," he said.

Burbank said the state's jail population is a better indicator of how many illegal immigrants are committing crimes, rather than looking at Hispanics specifically. The Sutherland Institute conducted one such study last year.

"Around 5 percent of the county populations, or the prison populations, is undocumented," explained Derek Monson, spokesman for the Sutherland Institute.

Herrod says he stands by his interpretation of the statistics. He refutes the Sutherland Institute's study, saying there are several flaws in the data collection.

e-mail: jstagg@ksl.com


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