EDITORIAL
Police funding has become an election issue in Austin, so it’s no surprise that crime statistics increasingly are being politicized.
Governor Greg Abbott seized on a report of higher burglaries in Austin in an October 1 tweet, suggesting, “This is the kind of thing that happens when cities defund and deemphasize police. Residents are left to fend for themselves.”
PolitiFact Texas quickly jumped in to contradict him, writing an article that rated Abbott’s claim “mostly false.” (PolitiFact is a partnership of the Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle, and San Antonio News-Express).
Mayor Steve Adler then pointed to the factcheck as evidence that Austin isn’t becoming more dangerous, saying, “The truth is Austin remains one of the safest big cities in the country and property crime is *not* on the rise.”
So what’s the truth? As with so much in journalism, this isn’t just a question of facts, it’s a question of interpretation.
The “factcheckers” at PolitiFact acknowledge that property crime did rise in 2018 and 2019, and that burglaries are up 11% so far this year. Yet somehow they still manage to reach the conclusion that Abbott is wrong.
They take a longer-term view of crime trends, pointing out, “property crime has dropped significantly over the past decade.” But of course, that wasn’t the governor’s claim. A major shift in policing and prosecutions has occurred in Austin just recently. So statistics from earlier periods aren’t relevant to factchecking the governor’s assertion.
PolitiFact next points out that “property crime on the whole is not rising this year. In fact, it has dropped by 2% compared to last year.” Burglaries may be up, but that’s just one kind of property crime — others include counterfeiting, shoplifting, and purse snatching.
But PolitiFact gets its own facts wrong: Police Chief Brian Manley’s latest monthly report shows a 1% year-to-date drop in overall property crime, not a 2% drop (technically, it’s -0.86%).
But that’s a minor mistake. The bigger problem is an error of interpretation. PolitiFact fails to drill down on the statistics to see what’s really going on. The roughly 1% decline in overall property crime is driven principally by a 19% fall in the number of shoplifting incidents. Pretty obviously, that’s because many shops were closed this year for weeks or even months, and some still haven’t reopened, or have gone out of business.
Another factor is a 44% decline in pick-pocketing. That’s because of canceled events like ACL Fest and SXSW, where police routinely warn of pick-pocketing.
Smash-and-grab jobs from vehicles also are down 5%, but that’s because there are fewer cars parked on streets on weekend nights. Bars and music venues have closed. The fall in vehicle burglaries accounts for a reduction of 491 property crimes year-to-date, larger than the entire net change in property crime.
In the meantime, PolitiFact ignores sharp increases in the most violent and lucrative crimes. Auto theft is up 31%, murder is up 40%, aggravated assault is up 18%, extortion is up 142%, and armed robbery is up 7%.
And those statistics are current through September, before a slew of robberies this past week, including a convenience store that was hit back-to-back twice in three nights.
Rape is down 8% but that’s partly because there are fewer college students back on campus (campus assault is known to be a major problem).
And even with fewer college students in town, there have been 231 rapes so far this year — a number that is unacceptably high.
A big drop in reported drug violations (-36%) likely stems from officers simply not looking to enforce those crimes, on account of political direction that they’re getting from prosecutors and the city council, and because authorities want to limit intake at jails to contain COVID-19. Yet we know that substance abuse and overdose deaths are rising nationally.
Weapon law violations, which often are associated with the drug trade, are down slightly overall (-5%), but up sharply in the police’s eastside and downtown sectors (38% in George sector, 32% in Charlie, and 41% in Baker). This suggests there are more illegal guns in the downtown — a serious threat to public safety.
PolitiFact rightly points out that Abbott’s claim of a causal link between police funding and rising property crime is based on “assumption.” The budget cuts only took effect October 1, which is after the crime statistics in question, the factcheckers say.
But attrition in the ranks of Austin Police goes back over a year, stemming from political choices to suspend cadet classes and not replace officers who leave the ranks.
PolitiFact cites research that a smaller police force doesn’t always lead to an increase in crime: “there is a weak or nonexistent connection between the two.”
Yet Abbott didn’t say that the crime wave was linked just to defunding. He blamed it on efforts to “defund and deemphasize police.” In other words, he suggested that it’s not just the number of officers that matters; what also counts is the public’s attitude toward the police and the rule of law. His argument, implicitly, is that the heated rhetoric around policing and law has emboldened criminals and weakened deterrence.
PolitiFact takes a different angle, saying that major crime drivers include “the prevalence of firearms in a community, alcohol consumption, drug use, unemployment and a population’s age structure.”
By implication, PolitiFact is suggesting tackling these underlying drivers to address crime, though the argument doesn’t come across all that coherently: “Researchers have demonstrated how numerous intervening factors confound the relationship between police force size and crime. Rather, strategic crime deterrent strategies are seen as having a more direct impact on crime rates.”
“Strategic strategies”?
Dare we suggest, in terms of strategy, that telegraphing the city’s intentions to eviscerate its police force, while also suspending certain criminal warrants, might be playing a role in luring criminal opportunists to the city? Of course, the council didn’t literally zero out the police budget, but there’s been plenty of aery and utopian language gesturing in that direction — from the dais, in the press, and on the street.
Mayor Adler wants to reassure the public, and he says that claims about rising crime are “designed to scare you and threaten public order.” It’s his job to try to reassure people and provide context. We don’t fault him for that.
But he’s wrong about the overall trend: crime is rising. Whether homegrown or not, the new crime wave is serious and it’s violent. And it’s not the people warning about it who are a threat to public order.
The mayor and other city leaders want to “reimagine” public safety. They’ve laid out an alternative vision for how to achieve law and order. And who knows, maybe they’ll get us there. But in the short-term, it’s not looking like that’s the case.
And we’re left wondering: What’s Plan B?
Document: Chief’s Monthly Crime Report
