As a law enforcement agency, the Phoenix Police Department keeps track of many statistics. In the past few years many of you have heard of the different ways we track statistics and what we do with the information. We have statistics covering a variety of different topics, such as calls for service, types of calls, number of officers, etc. The main statistics though that most people want to know about is the variety of crime types. There are also various ways to count crimes, whether it is by fiscal years, (City of Phoenix Fiscal Years are counted from July 1 to June 30), calendar years, and crime rates per 1000 citizens.
The Phoenix Police Department reports our official statistics according to the Uniform Reporting Criteria (UCR) which are not equivalent to Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) statistics or another other types. Under the hierarchy rule of UCR, only the most severe offense of an incident is counted, so if there is a Homicide after a Burglary, only the Homicide is counted. There are 4 Part One Violent Crimes that are counted and they are Homicide, Forcible Rape, Robbery and Aggravated Assault (counted individually by victim). There are 4 Part One Property Crimes that are counted and they are Stolen Vehicles, Arson, Theft, and Burglary (which includes residential, commercial and burglary from vehicles). There are part Two crimes that we count, but for this report I selected crimes that directly impact our neighborhoods quality of life and they are Drug Offenses and Prostitution.
For this report I used the last 4 years from 2008 to 2011 as a comparison. It is important to know that the Black Mountain Precinct opened in August of 2010 so the information is based on the current precinct boundaries regardless of when the incidents occurred. So if a crime reported for 2008 was in the Desert Horizon Precinct and the new boundary includes that crime in Black Mountain Precinct, it is counted in the Black Mountain Precinct. I also have the statistics separated by the two squad areas in our precinct. There is a map of the Black Mountain Precinct so you can see the squad and precinct areas.
As a whole, the City of Phoenix has been experiencing an all time low in crime rates. Both violent and property crime rates have been going down for the last decade. This is reflected in the crime counts in each precinct throughout the city. The City of Phoenix Police Department is currently working on a revamped web based public access crime statistics reporting system. This will allow anybody to go on our website and search crime stats by various types of areas. This is in progress and hopefully will be done very soon. I will let everyone know when this occurs so you may be able to get statistics yourselves. I believe you as a citizen have the right to be informed as to what is occurring in the city as it pertains to crime statistics. In the near future I will also be reporting these statistics to the various neighborhood associations throughout the precinct, breaking the statistics down even more. If anyone has any questions regarding these statistics or any other matter, please feel free to contact me at tim.mitten@phoenix.gov or at 602-495-5238. Thank you for your continued support of safety and your involvement in improving the quality of life in your neighborhoods.
This report is based on Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) criteria which are not equivalent to Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) statistics and therefore this data cannot be directly compared to ARS reports. Under the hierarchy rule of UCR, only the most severe offense of an incident is counted. Part One property crimes include motor vehicle theft, burglary, arson, and theft/larceny. Part One violent crimes include criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Aggravated assaults are counted by victim. Only select Part II crimes (drug and prostitution related offenses) are included in this report; additional Part II offenses are not included. Numbers may differ from other published reports due to case updates/reclassifications and/or to differences associated with unfounded incidents. UCR data excludes unfounded cases if the incident and the unfound occurred in the same month. However, if the incident and the unfound occurred in different months, then the removal of the unfounded cases will not be reflected in the data. Any reports with missing or incorrect information would not be properly depicted in this report. Any listed crimes that do not appear in this report had a count of 0 for the time period indicated. Grid, beat, and precinct boundaries changed effective August 23, 2010. Information in this report is based on these boundaries regardless of when the incident occurred.
By Officer Tim Mitten
Community Action Officer
Black Mountain Precinct
Phoenix Police Department
