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NUMBERS GAME
Now the BPD tells us ...
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN
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On November 8, Bostonians elected their mayor and city councilors. One week later, the Boston Police Department (BPD) finally made good on its promise to release up-to-date preliminary crime data on its Web site (www.cityofboston.gov/police/crimeStats.asp). From now on, citizens can see unofficial crime numbers — citywide and broken down by neighborhood — that are just a few days old. Good timing for Mayor Thomas Menino. Had the data been posted earlier, the public could have gone to the polls knowing that there was a 5.5 percent increase in violent crime in 2005 (not that it would have changed the electoral outcome). Instead, as of Election Day the BPD Web site contained figures only through July. That three-month data gap is typical of what has been publicly available in the past — and why many had called for posting of the unofficial, preliminary data. The numbers since the last official update are particularly bad. From August 1 through November 16 (the most recent update at press time), violent crime was up 6.6 percent over the same period last year. Aggravated assaults were up more than 10 percent over the same period. There is good news too: overall crime is down seven percent year-to-date, thanks to a sharp decline in vehicle theft and larceny. But all four categories of violent crime — homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault — have risen. The department insists that politics played no role in the timing of the new data-posting system’s debut. "There was no hold-up, no delay," says BPD media-relations director Thomas Sexton. "The election doesn’t affect what we want to communicate. That was the fastest we could get it done."
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