Mid-Year Stats Show Crime Reduction In Palm Bay
By Space Coast Daily // August 12, 2014
crime rate fell by nearly 5 percent
ABOVE VIDEO: A Palm Bay Police Officer ‘Shocks’ 8-Year Old Back To Life. An eight year old girl is in stable condition at an Orlando hospital following a near drowning in a backyard swimming pool.
BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA — New data being submitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Uniform Crime Report shows a continued drop in the crime rate for Central Florida’s second largest city during the first six months of 2014.
The overall crime rate fell by nearly 5 percent between January 1 and June 30 in comparison with the same time period in 2013.
The mid-year data shows reductions in index categories including robbery which dropped 25 percent in the first half of the year with 24 reported robberies compared to 32 the prior year.
There is also a significant reduction in the number of reported burglaries. Between January and June 2014 there were 230 reported burglaries throughout the city compared with 338 for the same time period in 2013. This reflects a 32 percent drop in this crime category.
The crime category of vehicle burglary also declined with the data showing 189 reported vehicle burglaries so far this year compared to 224 the prior year, for a reduction of nearly 16 percent. Domestic violence related crimes remained steady compared to the prior year.
The UCR data reflects increases in reported sex crimes, aggravated assaults and specific categories of theft including a 70 percent increase in the number of reported cases involving shoplifting.
The data also shows an overall 7 percent increase in the number of arrests. However this data may include arrests for crimes that occurred outside this reporting window and does not necessarily reflect a particular trend in the number of crimes solved or cleared by arrest.
“Overall the numbers reflect a downward trend in the number of crimes reported in the first half of this year” said Chief Doug Muldoon.
“There were areas where we saw increases and we will be taking a closer look at this activity to see if additional attention and resources are warranted.”
The data continues to show Palm Bay as one of the top five safest cities in the state of Florida with a population of more than 100,000 residents. As of July 28 the city had an estimated population of 108,112 persons. This estimate was derived from an active residential electric meter count of 45,909 meters obtained from FPL.
The Palm Bay Police Department is required by Florida statute to collect and report statistical data on specific crimes and report that data to the FDLE for inclusion in the state’s Uniform Crime Report.
The specific crimes in this report are called index crimes which are tracked uniformly across all jurisdictions. These index crimes are collected from all law enforcement agencies in the state and are meant to provide an accurate summary of crime data that meet the minimum requirements of the National UCR program.
It also functions as a way to maintain agency statistics and provide a general barometer of the number of index crimes that occur in a community, determine crime and clearance rates and ascertain how often crime occurs.
Since crime is a sociological phenomenon influenced by a variety of factors, this data is not meant to be used as a measurement of law enforcement effectiveness.
