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Cape Girardeau Sees A Drop In Crime In 2018, According To Uniform Crime Report

Paul Sableman/Flickr, License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

Violent crimes in Cape Girardeau have dropped by nearly 17% over the past year.

That’s according to Cape Girardeau Police chief Wes Blair, who spoke to the city council on Monday night regarding the Uniform Crime Report (UCR).

Created by the federal government in 1929, the UCR program tracks eight various categories of crime across the nation, and marks how cities, counties, and municipalities compare to each other. Blair said the eight categories include homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. These are considered ‘Part 1’ crimes -- those which are generally more reported across the country. ‘Part 2’ crimes, said Blair, include all other incidents.

Although Blair presents these statistics to the council each year, he said they took the average crime statistics from 2018, and compared them to the previous five years -- something they haven’t done before.

“Comparing this year to last year is good, and that tells us where we are,” said Blair. “But it doesn’t really give us the broad picture over time.”

He said Part 1 crimes have dropped by 12.93% as compared to the previous five years -- a statistic even he raised his eyebrows at.

“It’s encouraging, and makes me feel like we’re going in the right direction,” said Blair.

Part 2 crimes decreased by 4.93% last year, and are down 17% over the last five years. Combining both Part 1 and Part 2 crimes, he said overall crime in Cape Girardeau dropped by 4.4% from 2017 to 2018, and over the five year period, dropped a little over 15%.

Blair said he and the council discussed violent and gun crime during last year’s UCR report. Violent crime encompasses homicides, robberies, rapes, and assaults that result in serious bodily injury. He said violent crime has dropped 17% and gun crimes 5% last year. In property crimes -- less than 1%. The five-year comparison shows violent crimes have gone down 15%, but gun crimes have risen 12%.

“Last year, we talked about addressing that number, and getting it knocked down,” said Blair. “But I’m pretty happy with the progress we’ve made over the last year with that.”

Calls for service have increased, but police reports have gone down from an average of 8,700 over the past five years to just shy of 8,000 last year. Blair says they may have “created their own monster” with that.

“How do you have calls for service go up but crime is going down?” asked Blair, rhetorically. “Well, we encourage the community to always call us. So they do. It’s encouraging that people are actually calling us for things, and they’re comfortable.”

But, Blair noted, a lot of those calls aren’t necessarily criminal activity.

“It could be something along the lines of welfare checks, traffic accidents,” said Blair. He then brought up a comical incident which caught the attention of the community at the time: “It could be a goose fight on Capaha Park.”

After a laugh from the council, he quipped, “No geese were arrested.”

Another statistic Blair finds pride in is the decrease in motor vehicle accidents. These accidents were averaging nearly 2,100 per year over a five year period, and are now down to just over 1,800 per year. He says this can be attributed to having a crime analyst dive into those numbers, and see where and when motor vehicle accidents are happening. This way, the police department can make roads safer in those areas.

Mayor Bob Fox also found this statistic significant.

“That’s impressive, because there is a lot more traffic now than there was five years ago,” said Fox.

Blair recapped some of their some of their initiatives which took off in 2018. These included a continuing summer program called the “Street Crime Task Force,” directed patrols, the body-worn camera project, the expansion of the department’s K9 unit from two to four dogs, and the opening of a substation at St. Francis Medical Center. They also launched their “Watch On Wheels Program,” a partnership with the Cape County Transit Authority to reduce crime. He said they haven’t solved a crime with “Watch On Wheels” yet, but they’re hopeful it will. He said another accomplishment in 2018 was training 75% of their officers for crisis intervention.

In 2019, Blair said he wants to expand their “Watch on Wheels Program,” and hopes to open a substation in the southern part of Cape within the next month. The department will also implement a Radio Interoperability project, and will work on a CAD/RMS/911 grant near the end of the year.

 
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