Lower Crime Figures in Tosa Come with a Dose of Caution

It's not unusual to hear someone say that crime is getting out of hand here in Wauwatosa and it's just no longer a safe place.

But it's also not unusual to hear someone else respond that crime isn't all that bad — Tosa is actually a pretty safe community and not getting worse.

According to the pure statistics, the latter is much closer to the truth, as far as overall crime trends go, including the total number of serious crimes in a year: Criminal activity has been generally in decline in Tosa for the past 10 years, with a couple of spikes, and there have been very small upticks in both 2009 and 2010.

Think that's a bad sign — possibly a signal that things are in fact now getting worse?

Wauwatosa Police Capt. Jeff Sutter provided Patch with the most recent data, showing that so far in 2011, through July 4, overall crime is down again over the 2010, and in certain key areas, the decrease is dramatic.

This year, there had been only 71 burglaries by July 4 compared with 145 last year by that date – 51 percent less than 2010. There had also been fewer sexual assaults, batteries, thefts, vehicle thefts and arsons, all by much smaller margins.

There had been four more robberies — 25 this year compared to 21 in 2010.

None of which has Sutter spinning happily in his chair — not even the decrease in burglaries by half.

"It's good, but does it really mean anything to me? No," Sutter said. "When you're looking only at statistics, especially a recent six-month window of data, it's not all that helpful.

"Burglary is a perfect example. When we get burglaries, we get them in rashes, and many are done by the same subjects — maybe 30 by the same people before they get caught or move on."

Sutter said there have been changes in federal Uniform Crime Report standards, in state laws and in police practices that can also affect the meaning of long-term statistics for certain crimes.

"Assault, battery and sexual assault are frightening as statistics," he said, "but the brunt of our assaults are domestic violence. Now, that's a bad thing, but is it indicative of an unsafe community?

"It used to be that victims just wanted a police presence to stop the fight, and that was what we did. But now, somebody is going to get arrested. Somebody's coming with us."

Sutter said that statistics for those crimes would therefore have to take into account a lot of variables over time. Are more or fewer incidents being reported, given the likelihood of arrest? Do more arrests mean more incidents, or simply a different outcome to those incidents that occur?

"This is subjective," Sutter said, "but since I've taken over this role, the red flag for me is robbery. It's so personal a violation, it sets the tone for the perception of safety in the community.

"Now, last year we hit a 10-year low with 42 robberies. That's good. But if you were one of those 42 people, I'm not even going to try to tell you things are going well."

In 2006, Sutter pointed out, the city reached what was then a 10-year low in criminal offenses at 2,162, down from a high of 2,633 in 2001.

"But robberies jacked up to 124 in 2006, a terrible year," Sutter said. "We were just overrun with robberies.

"And it was like it was Armaggedon. 'We've been fearing this for 20 years!' – 'It's finally here, it's never going to be the same!'

"That didn't happen."

The 124 robberies in 2006 were an unexplained anomaly. The next highest number had been 81, in 2000, and the average since 1997 had been around 65.

And in 2007, after the "terrible year," robberies dropped back to 66 and have dropped each year since to the low of 42 last year.

In other crime classifications:

• Rapes reached a high in 2008, with 21 reported;
• Assaults peaked in 2000 with 152;
• Burglaries have never come close to their high in 1997, when there were 321;
• Larceny thefts topped out in 2001 at 1,971 offenses;
• Vehicle thefts likewise peaked in 2001, with 161 incidents.

Other than the fact that 2001 accounted for a high in all crimes and in two categories, with two more categories peaking the year before, there's not a lot that can be said about patterns or trends – except that since 2001, overall crime numbers are down, while spikes in certain crimes just show up from time to time, usually without explanation.

"If I could look at statistics and predict trends," Sutter said, "I would be police commissioner of New York."

YTD July 4, 2010 vs. YTD July 4, 2011

-40%

+19%

-5%

-51%

-13%

-16%

  –

-6%

Overall crime in Wauwatosa: 2001 – 2010

Theft

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TOMORROW: The real trend in crime, according to Wauwatosa Police Capt. Jeff Sutter.