How much crime goes unnoticed in Fullerton?

According to the Fullerton Police Departments July Council Update, in June the Department was dispatched to 3,529 calls for service and initiated 2,164 additional contacts. There were 1,055 criminal reports taken and 419 persons arrested for various criminal offenses.  Those statistics make "TheEducation Community" sound like the bad part of L.A.

According to the Fullerton Police iWatch Alert System, one garage (and the car inside), one home, a residential trailer, and on truck were all burglarized.  The iWatch statistics make Fullerton look safer than Irvine!

So where is the truth? 

The truth is that iWatch does not alert subscribers to all crimes, just those that a few people think you should know about. 

Does this practice of filtering mislead the public and give the community a false sense of security?  Yes. 

If the only intent of using the system is to alert subscribers to crime trends in their neighborhood, we have the beginning of something good.  The iWatch Alert System has a long way to go before becoming a real public alert tool.

To help put Fullerton's crime in perspective, we have to quantify the crimes.  Let's look at 2011.

In May, the Department was dispatched to 3,637 calls for service and initiated 2,609 additional contacts. There were 1,101 criminal reports taken and 458 persons arrested for various criminal offenses.

In April, the Department was dispatched to 3,616 calls for service and initiated 2,555 additional contacts. There were 1,190 criminal reports taken and 483 persons arrested for various criminal offenses.

In March, Officers responded to 3,406 calls for service and initiated 3,072 additional contacts. A total of 1,145 criminal reports were taken, and 574 persons were arrested for various criminal offenses.

There were 2,795 calls for service & 1,230 criminal reports taken in February.

January was a bit unusual.  The PD did not report any crimes to the council.  Instead, they noted the following:

  

"Community Policing and Crime Strategy project: In January the Police Department concluded its first six months of an expanded Community Policing and Crime Strategy partnership project. Designed to address crime trends as well as improve communication between the community and the department, this multi-pronged approach to community policing and problem solving has quickly galvanized crime reduction efforts. It places an importance on all Police divisions and City departments working collaboratively on community issues. Examples of this included projects with Habitat for Humanity residents, the Euclid Corridor project, Mercy House and training presented by the Community Development Department on crime prevention through environmental design. Since July, staff has been meeting monthly, placing an emphasis on analysis of crime data, expansion of our in-house crime tracking system, and an increased role for our Crime Analysis Unit. Policing sectors were created by the Watch Commanders to better respond to where most of the crime has been occurring and where most calls for service are generated. Initial focus was on responding to community issues spotlighting crime trends and offenders with a high recidivism rate. Additionally, Lieutenants now serve in geo-policing assignments resulting in better accountability for responding to calls within each of the six policing sectors. As staffing has allowed, we are also redeploying officers to smaller sector areas. An initial comparison of serious crime occurring in 2010 is encouraging. Overall, crime was down 7.9 percent for the six months of this project compared to the first six months of 2010. Significant reductions were in auto burglary, theft from vehicles and crimes of violence,."

Until significant improvements are made, I will consider Fullerton's iWatch to be a beta test.