Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/444500
OnthefirstFriday morning paper of 2015 we were greeted with a banner headline that proclaimed, "Red Bluff crime rate among high- est in the state." The proclamation was refer- ring to a per capita vi- olent crime rate calculated by the FBI for the year 2013. The short article that ac- companied that headline pro- vided a few numbers but did not provide much context. As a journalism major, and a numbers person, I immedi- ately sought to do some re- search to put that proclama- tion into some kind of per- spective before I could decide whether or not I should sell my house and move. I was sur- prised by what I found. I hope this commentary can put the violent crime rate in Red Bluff in some kind of per- spective to help us all think about it, and perhaps encour- age more public input into community safety. All sorts of questions swirled though my head. Are we an unsafe community? How much more dangerous is life here versus other places? How do we compare to other "hot spots" for crime? Is our "high" rating in 2013 a statis- tical aberration because of our low population? What have been the trends nationally and locally? For those of you who do not like lots of numbers or just want to get to the chase, you can skip the next few sections and go to the last section titled "What next?" Fortunately the FBI data base is easily available online, and the data base is extensive. If you are interested in state data, regional data, and city data it is all there at the click of a mouse. I did not go be- yond 2008 in my short bit of research. What Are Violent Crimes? The FBI includes murder, forcible rape, robbery and ag- gravated assault in its cate- gory of violent crimes. It mea- sures their frequency based the number of incidents per 100,000 inhabitants. Thus, for example, if there were 1,000 violent crimes in a city of 100,000 the rate would be 1,000. Whatarethenational trends? In 2013 according to the FBI crime data base the rate of violent crime in the United States was 367.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. This number was down from the rate of 713.6 in 1994. In other words the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by almost 48 percent in 20 years. The ac- tual number of violent crimes also declined even as our pop- ulation grew by over 58 mil- lion. What are the rates for various states? Looking at state rates of vi- olent crime, the range in 2013 was from a low of 121 per 100,000 in Vermont to a high of 640 in Alaska; in the Dis- trict of Columbia it was 1300. In California the rate was 402. What was the Red Bluff Rate for 2013 and How does it compare? According to the FBI there were 146 violent crimes in Red Bluff in 2013; given our popu- lation of 14,170 as calculated by the FBI, this generates a vi- olent crime rate of 1,030 per 100,000 inhabitants. If the rate in the entire United States were the same as that in Red Bluff in 2013, the number of violent crimes would have been 3,278,972 instead of the 1,163,146 re- ported by the FBI. On the surface this may seem shock- ing. Red Bluff's rate is above the rate for the state; if the state had the same rate as Red Bluff it would have re- corded almost 200,000 more violent crimes than it did. So we can safely say that Red Bluff compared very unfavorably with both the state of California and the United States in 2013. In looking at the rate for other cities in California, Red Bluff does not compare well ei- ther. The usual suspects, Rich- mond, Stockton, and Oakland had rates of 1040, 1210, and 1910 respectively. Other cities in the news had much lower rates than Red Bluff. Sacra- mento, San Jose, and Los An- geles were 656, 324, and 426. Around the country the rates are high just where you might imagine; in Detroit it was 2072; in Flint 1908; in Memphis 1656; in Cleveland 1478. Local cities include: Corn- ing at 620, Redding at 640, Chico at 340, Willows at 280, and Anderson at 623 in 2013. Red Bluff trends I next looked at data from the 2012 FBI report. For that year the rate for Red Bluff was 786, in other words, the rate went up 31 percent from one year to another; rates for the usual suspects, Stockton, etc. did not vary like that because of the larger population base. In looking at the FBI data for the five year period of 2009 through 2013 the rate for Red Bluff averaged 857. In other words the Red Bluff rate was still relatively high over the last five years. What next? Clearly we are not Flint, Michigan or Oakland, Califor- nia; just as clearly we do have a higher than average violent crime rate. There are probably a lot of things we can do to lower our rate of violent crime; be- ing aware of the rate is a first step. Having more complete news coverage in local media would help develop awareness and spur more interest in the issues involved; the news has to go beyond the local police press releases or just what is available on the blotter. One of the impressive things about living here is the num- ber of people who have a can do attitude. The residents of Red Bluff, you and I, are our greatest resource. Given lead- ership from the City Council, I believe a citizens committee could develop suggestions for Red Bluff that could make a difference. Redding which has recently generated significant commu- nity input into lowering crime in that city; it had a rate of 640 in 2013. In 2012 the rate was 775, and it triggered a great deal of activity to make Redding a more secure com- munity. Public consciousness and participation has spurred plans and goals for that com- munity, as I believe it could for ours. City Council may want to look at Redding for guidance. City Council, however, has not really addressed crime in recent years except for lis- tening to the pleading of the Chief of Police for more things and money; it also hears the jail is full, and we have AB 109 to deal with; however, the violent crime rates in Red Bluff were high even before AB 109. We can- not blame AB 109 and a full jail for all of our crime, as some are like to do. It is time for a change. JoeHarropisaretirededuca- tor with more than 30 years of service to the North State. He can be reached at DrJoeHar- rop@sbcglobal.net. JoeHarrop Is Red Bluff too unsafe? Cartoonist's take A funny thing happened on the way to a news story: ABC and NBC were again distracted by friendly noise from fellow leftwing travelers. Sarah Palin, whose name is to liberals as flame is to moths, made public comments agree- ing with Tea Partiers across America that Steve Scalise, the Republican House Major- ity Whip, is unfit to serve as the third most powerful Republican in Congress due to his associa- tions with former David Duke operatives. While the loud and sustained voices from conservatives call- ing for Scalise to resign due to his fellowship with racists would surely be a mainstream political news story, ABC and NBC were more readily at- tracted to the shiny bauble pre- sented on leftwing outlets such as Huffington Post and Salon, known as "Service Dog Enjoys Relationship with Down Syn- drome Boy" or as the left wing put it, "Sarah Palin allows son to torture dog!" 6-year-old Trig Palin wanted to help clean dishes, so the sock-footed boy stepped on his trained Labrador retriever to reach the sink. The dog didn't mind. Sarah posted the picture on Facebook. Leftwing outrage ensued. Last July, liberal Demo- crat Ellen DeGeneres posted an equally cute picture of her daughter standing on her dog's back to brush her teeth. Ellen posted the pic. Leftwing approval ensued. Neither Good Morning Amer- ica's Amy Robach nor NBC To- day Show's Matt Lauer chose to compare those disparate re- actions to similar social me- dia postings. So much for "bal- ance." Nor did they choose to re- port on the more important is- sue of conservatives vs inside- the-beltway Republicans fight- ing over the news that, in 2002, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana addressed a white supremacist group known as EURO, the Eu- ropean-American Unity and Rights Organization founded by the notorious Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. So much for journalistic in- tegrity. Conservatives from Breitbart to Palin and Tea Party Conser- vatives from California to Con- necticut called for Scalise to re- sign. Many feel the same way that I do: If he isn't a racist, then he's not bright enough to know EURO is a racist group to be shunned. For that he can't be trusted with the responsibility of Majority Whip. Worse than that, Scalise has been working with Duke cam- paign operatives Kenny Knight and Howie Farrell for years, so all of his denials and dispar- agements of EURO fall on deaf ears. Still, he has support from some black colleagues. African-American Louisiana Democratic Rep. Cedric Rich- mond defended Scalise saying, "I don't think Steve Scalise has a racist bone in his body." African-American Republi- can Mia Love describes Scal- ise' humility and helping her acclimate to the House, say- ing he should remain as Major- ity Whip. Naturally, MSNBC and Huff- ington Post have been enjoy- ing parading Scalise around as some Republican racist to- tem and Obama's spokeswea- sel, Josh "Notso" Earnest, said that it says a lot about Republi- can leaders' "priorities and val- ues" if embattled House Major- ity Whip Steve Scalise remains in his leadership post in the new Congress. In typical hypocritical fash- ion, Democrats both moderate and liberal enthusiastically de- fended longtime West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, once an "Exalted Cyclops" or "Hooded Monkey" or other such nonsensical Grand PooBah title of the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, Republicans would rail against Byrd, who spent hun- dreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to emblazon his name on government landmarks in West Virginia while liberals would quickly defend him. They would sincerely plead, "Byrd apologized for working so hard to become a Klan leader" and "Byrd regretted that the only way he could get elected was to become a Klan leader." That's nice. Scalise has also apologized for talking about slush funds at the EURO meeting. He was never a Klan Exalted Squid, though he did exhibit extraordi- narily poor judgment. So while the liberal Dem- ocrats supported racist Rob- ert Byrd for decades and have excoriated Steve Scalise, only one group in American politics has spoken out against both of them: Tea Party Conservatives. Maybe the producers at NBC and ABC figured this out and decided that describing the sweet relationship between Trig Palin and his service dog as something disgusting was the "better" topic for them to pur- sue. Rick Jensen is Delaware's award-winning conserva- tive talk show host on 1150AM WDEL, streaming live on WDEL.com from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. local time. Email Rick at rick@wdel.com or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL. Rick Jensen Liberal media dogs Sarah Palin GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIAL BOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Joe Harrop Back in December when it was raining, a columnist for the L.A. Times laid into state officials for insisting we were in a drought. A drought was a lack of rain, he railed. It was raining. Therefore, there was no drought. He was willing to admit there was a water shortage, but even that was a regional thing. Sure, lakes like Shasta and Oro- ville were low, but Diamond Valley Reservoir was nearly full. Diamond Valley, for those of you who've never heard of it, is a lake the Metropolitian Water District completed in 1999 near Hemet in Riverside County to store water taken from the Colorado River. No water flows into it naturally. If it's full, it's only full be- cause water has been taken from someplace else. So yeah, the water shortage is regional, defined by who can take water from whom. This comes to mind with Tuesday's monthly report on water conservation efforts in the state. The latest numbers are for November, and state of- ficials were delighted that there was an improvement in the amount of water saved from October. Water shortages may just be regional, and water saving certainly is. The Sacramento Valley has hit Brown's tar- get as often as not. Novem- ber water usage here was 25 percent less than the same month last year. The South Coast — L.A. to San Diego — cut water usage just 3.2 per- cent. That has pretty well mir- rored the way the regional numbers have gone since the state started reporting them. Places that naturally have wa- ter have cut back. Places with- out water have lagged. It may come down to the fact up here we can see the effects of the drought. The stark bare banks of Lake Oroville and fal- lowed farm fields make it clear there isn't as much water. So we save. We really need to call it like it is. Everyone needs to be on board, and not every- one is. Water officials in the south need to stop sniffing about how much water they've saved in the past and how pit- ting one region against an- other isn't the way to solve the problem. They need to stop telling us we need to work together as a state on a long-term solution, when that apparently means everyone else saving water so Southern California doesn't have to. Chico Enterprise Record Editorial Drought: Not everyone doing their part OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, January 10, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4