Local law enforcement agencies regularly submit crime statistics to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system through their state law enforcement agencies. Part I UCR crimes are the eight “major” offenses and may be divided into violent and property crimes. The violent crimes include murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. The property crimes include burglary (residential & business), larceny (theft & burglary of a vehicle), auto theft, and arson. Part II UCR crimes include all other offenses such as vandalism, DWI, disorderly conduct, drug offenses, weapons offenses, etc.

In reviewing the below statistics, one must remember that many factors both within and outside the criminal justice system effect the crime rate. Such factors include the performance of law enforcement, quality of prosecution, stringency in sentencing, effectiveness of probationer/parolee monitoring, unemployment rate, other economic factors, and proportion of 16 to 25 year old males in the local population, to name just a few. Level of confidence of the public in the criminal justice system may also exert unexpected effects. An increase in the crime rate may reflect an actual increase in the number of crimes committed or simply an increase in the number of crimes reported by victims when public confidence is high. The reverse may be true where decreases occur. For these reasons, a local law enforcement agency should not accept credit for decreased crime rates nor should it be blamed for increases.

2007 STATISTICS

Odessa’s crime rate was down in three of the eight Part I crime categories.
The overall Part I crime rate for 2007 increased by 12.43% as compared with 2006 (4847 vs. 4311).
The violent crime rate for 2007 decreased by 15% as compared with 2006 (529 vs. 624).
The property crime rate for 2007 increased by 17% as compared with 2006 (4318 vs. 3687).

 

The Part II crime rate for 2007 decreased by 9.6% as compared with 2006 (5311 vs 5875).

COMMENTS

The overall reduction in the violent crime rate appears statistically significant and is encouraging. While the number of murders increased from two to six, three of these were our three officers, shot in one incident, therefore the number of incidents involving murder rose from two to four.

The overall increase in the property crime rate also appears to be statistically significant. Rates of property crimes and robberies typically increase in a booming economy. This seems counterintuitive since the availability of jobs would seem to alleviate the need to steal. The reverse is generally true for a variety of reasons associated with the increased activity in the community. Citizens are busier and are more careless with their property. Busy parents sometimes do not pay as much attention to their teenaged and young adult children, who are responsible for large percentages of property crime. Both opportunist and career criminals perceive that there is more out there to steal. Drug and alcohol use increases, as users of both have more money to spend. Law enforcement is busier with a higher call load, reducing the amount of time available for proactive deterrent and investigative efforts. This last item is especially true of the Odessa Police Department at this time as we struggle, like most law enforcement agencies nationally, with a personnel shortage.

As in previous years, it is my believe that we could reduce our property crimes by half if citizens would not: leave their keys in unattended vehicles; leave open garages unattended; leave property unattended in the backs of pick-ups; leave vehicles unlocked; and, even in locked vehicles, leave high-value items such as purses and laptops in plain view. Again, busy citizens in a booming economy are generally more careless about such things. We continually engage in efforts to educate the public in this area via news releases, public talks, etc.

 TEN YEAR CRIME DATA