Bucking a nationwide trend, violent crime in Morgan Hill is not
increasing compared to past years, and property crimes, except for
auto theft, are down, according to information released by the
Morgan Hill Police Department and the FBI’s Crime in the United
States report.
Morgan Hill – Bucking a nationwide trend, violent crime in Morgan Hill is not increasing compared to past years, and property crimes, except for auto theft, are down, according to information released by the Morgan Hill Police Department and the FBI’s Crime in the United States report.
In all categories of violent crime – murder, rape, robbery – except for aggravated assault, the number of incidents in 2006 in Morgan Hill were down from 2005 and 2004, according to the report released Monday.
Total violent crimes, however, because of the jump in aggravated assaults, are the same as in 2005. Both years, there were 60 incidents of violent crime in the city.
An aggravated assault is one that involves the use of a weapon or causes serious bodily injury.
“One figure I look at is aggravated assault,” said Morgan Hill Police Chief Bruce Cumming. “You see mainly two things in that number, gang activity and domestic violence. There are other incidents, but I think those two make up the majority. We’re seeing this number increase.”
In a community the size of Morgan Hill, one or two incidents can dramatically increase the number of crimes per capita, pointed out Morgan Hill police Cmdr. David Swing.
Swing and Cumming said the population increase in Morgan Hill can also be tied to an increase in incidents, and Cumming added that spikes in different types of crimes are not uncommon, saying that in his opinion, a real trend in an increase or decrease in crimes occurs over 10 or 20 years, not two or three.
“I do think people are more violent today than they were 40 years ago, 20 years ago,” he said. “They are, in my opinion, more likely to jump into violence for a minor matter. Road rage, a good example, is a fairly new phenomenon. I think we see more incidents of people resorting more quickly to violence than we did years ago.”
Property crimes in Morgan Hill, including burglary and theft also dropped in 2006, but auto theft spiked, with 114 vehicles stolen in 2006, compared to 86 in 2005 and 84 in 2004.
Arson is not included in the property crimes statistics because, according to the FBI, there are too many variations in the level of participation of the law enforcement agencies. The Morgan Hill Police Department does not conduct arson investigations since the city has a contractual arrangement with the Santa Clara County Fire Department.
Nationwide, according to the FBI report, violent crime increased 1.9 percent while property crime decreased 1.9, compared to 2005.
The FBI report shows an estimated more than 14.3 million arrests by law enforcement agencies nationwide, not including traffic offense arrests.
Morgan Hill’s crime clearance rates are higher than the national average among cities of a similar size. The FBI report gives clearance information based on arrests for crimes.
For robbery in 2006, MHPD had a clearance rate of 60 percent, while the national average for cities with populations of 25,000-49,999 was 31.1 percent; MHPD’s aggravated assault clearance rate was 60 percent, while nationally it was 58.4 percent. Fifteen percent of Morgan Hill’s auto thefts were cleared., while nationally, the rate is 14.5 for cities of a similar size.
The clearance rates for so-called “body crimes” are higher, Cumming said, because the person who is attacked is a witness and can generally give officers a description of the suspect or suspects. With property crimes, many times there are no witnesses, so law enforcement agencies have a more difficult time making an arrest.
The FBI report comes with a caution against using the statistics improperly.
“Each year when Crime in the United States is published, some entities use reported figures to compile rankings of cities and counties. These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state or region.”
Cumming agreed, pointing out that the statistics are just one measure of police activity in a community.
