La PORTE COUNTY — A national media report saw the Michigan City-La Porte area ranked highly on a list in which no community wants to appear, leaving law enforcement officials scratching their heads.
USA Today, in conjunction with 24/7 Wall Street, recently published a story with the headline, “25 cities where crime is soaring.” Specifically, the report analyzed violent crimes (rape, robbery, aggravated assault and murder) in nearly 200 metropolitan areas across the country, according to FBI data.
All 25 metro areas on the list saw spikes of at least 30 percent over a five-year period — from 2011 to 2016 — with Michigan City-La Porte landing at No. 3 with a nearly 80 percent jump.
Police officials such as Michigan City Police Chief Mark Swistek and La Porte County Sheriff John Boyd were surprised at the area’s inclusion, intimating that doesn’t jive with activity they’re seeing. But, there might be a logical explanation.
According to the FBI data, the MC-LP area saw a jump from 167.8 incidents per 100,000 citizens in 2011 to 301.2 incidents per 100,000 citizens in 2016. The report does point out, however, that even with the spike, the area falls well below the national average of 386 incidents per 100,000 citizens, stating: “Despite the recent spike in the violent crime, Michigan City-La Porte remains relatively safe … (and its violent crime rate) is lower than in the majority of metro areas in Indiana.”
A deeper dive on the data shows one category that jumps out. Comparing 2011 to 2015, for instance, numbers in the categories remained relatively constant. Murder was at three in both 2011 and 2015; rape was at 15 in both 2011 and 2015; robbery was at 51 in 2011 and 46 in 2015; and aggravated assault was at 70 in 2011 and 51 in 2015.
In 2016, the final year of data analyzed for the USA Today piece, murder was at two, rape at 28, and robbery at 70. While there was a large jump in the number of reported rapes, the category that dramatically skewed the data, accounting for a vast majority of the nearly 80 percent increase over the five-year period, was aggravated assault. In 2016, there were 179 combined such incidents reported, or approximately a 350 percent increase.
So, what accounts for this? Is the data correct? Local officials say it’s complicated.
Law enforcement agencies have already or soon will be transferring from one reporting system to another. The current standard, Uniform Crime Reporting, or UCR, will be replaced by National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS.
Agencies have until 2021 to become compliant. But, departments in La Porte County switched over in 2016.
This is significant, both Swistek and Boyd agree. They say NIBRS defines aggravated assault a little more broadly than UCR, believing that accounts for the dramatic spike in aggravated assault incidents because incidents in the past that might have been classified as simple assault are now being classified as aggravated assault.
Stats from MCPD bear this out to some degree. From 2011 to 2016, total assaults were up in Michigan City (from 583 to 649), but only by about 10 percent. According to the FBI data, aggravated assault rose in MC from 44 incidents in 2011 to 115 in 2016, or a jump of more than 260 percent.
Sometimes, changes in reporting practices or policing procedures can produce misleading statistics, according to Boyd. He remembers that, in 2015, his department noticed a surge in batteries across the county.
Baffled by the increase, they analyzed the data and found that many of those batteries were originating in schools. That year, Boyd said, the department had increased its presence in area schools with resource officers. So, many student fights that, in the past, might have been handled with in-house discipline, now generated a report with the sheriff’s department, leading to a spike in crime numbers.
Stephen G. Fischer Jr., media liaison for the FBI division responsible for the Uniform Crime Reporting program, said the bureau “strongly discourages the ‘ranking’ of cities/agencies/metro areas” when it comes to crime statistics.
Also, Fischer provided information showing that, currently, about one-third of law enforcement agencies across the nation have transitioned to NIBRS. Also, an excerpt from a page on fbi.gov explaining NIBRS reads as follows:
“… because of the greater level of reporting specificity in NIBRS … it can initially appear that an agency has higher levels of crime after switching to NIBRS.”
The page goes on to indicate, though, that the nation’s agencies are moving to NIBRS because it “can provide more useful statistics that will promote constructive discussion, measured planning and informed policing.”
Swistek said the decision to move to NIBRS in 2016 was simply a proactive measure.
“We made the decision to be forward thinkers on going to NIBRS sooner than the anticipated mandatory deadline,” Swistek said.
Indiana State Police confirmed that, aside from ISP itself, La Porte County agencies were the first in the state to make the switch to NIBRS. Currently, there are only 13 agencies fully on the system, including the La Porte County Sheriff’s Department, the La Porte County DEA Task Force, Michigan City Police Department and Westville Police Department. An ISP representative said 13 more are in the certification process and another 110 agencies are doing server work in anticipation of reporting with NIBRS.
"(Assistant Chief Royce Williams) got out ahead of this and worked with other La Porte County law enforcement officials to get it done,” Swistek said. “We wanted to comply with the FBI and be the first to step forward, just like with body-worn cameras. There wasn’t a mandate by anyone else with that, we made the decision to do that.”
