And here is some information on population and violent crime. It's from a few years ago, and politicians are trying to claim that things have greatly improved recently, partly due to a new chief from Paterson, NJ:
https://www.timesleader.com/news/374972/hazleton-violence-up-more-cops-needed
Hazleton is a more violent place than it was 35 years ago.
In fact, the city is more violent than it was even 15 years ago.
A Times Leader review of three decades’ worth of federal and state crime reports shows that the number of violent crimes committed in Hazleton has spiked dramatically since the early 2000s, and particularly so since 2005.
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After nearly 30 years of losing residents, Hazleton’s declining population finally began to grow again in the 2000s, pushing the city from just under 22,000 back to more than 25,000 people — a figure not seen for more than 20 years, but still below the 27,000 inhabitants of the early 1980s.
Statistics show the spike in crime almost exactly coincides with renewed population growth.
Statistics, and conversations with community leaders, suggest that the causes behind increasing violence may not be as simple as some might like to believe.
At the same time, one two-word solution to the problem kept popping up in interviews last week: “more cops.”
But even that solution may not prove as straightforward as some would hope.
Police Chief Frank DeAndrea, in a lengthy interview with the Times Leader, shared the same view he has shared with other media and with the city’s elected officials: More full-time police officers is the answer, said DeAndrea, who does not believe part-time officers would be as effective here.
Mayor Joseph Yannuzzi shares that view. Except Yannuzzi’s defeat at the polls in May’s primary election means someone else will occupy the city’s top post come 2016.
The two councilmen vying for that honor, Republican Jeffrey Cusat and Democrat Jack Mundie, both said they believe part-time officers would be both an effective solution for the department and cost-effective for their cash-strapped city.
As of last week, four new full-time hires put the force at 38, including DeAndrea. That’s down from 2007, when there were 40 police, DeAndrea said. And the four are effectively replacements for officers who retired or took other posts.
Statistics
DeAndrea made headlines earlier this month when he pointed out that the city’s homicide rate was four times the national average — four per 100,000 people — in recent years. At that rate, this year’s lone homicide in the city puts Hazleton, with its 25,000 people, at the national average.
Homicides capture headlines, just as they capture a large share of any police department’s time and resources, but they are not the only category of violent crime.
Following the chief’s remarks, the Times Leader examined state and federal reports detailing crimes in the city using reports available from 1980 through 2013. While numbers for all 12 months were not available in a handful of years, the trends are very clear.
State and federal record keeping identifies murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault as violent crimes. They identify burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson as property crimes.
Compared with violent crimes, property crimes showed less fluctuation throughout the period.
As the accompanying table shows, homicides in the past four years have indeed been higher than most years over the period.
At the same time, most other categories of violent crime showed many fluctuations over the period, before spiking in the early 2000s.
Among violent crimes other than murder, the fluctuations in reported rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults stand out.
Reported rapes, often in the single digits, reached 11 in 2006, 2007 and 2011, and climbed to 19 in 2012.
Similarly, reported robberies regularly remained in the double digits in the 2000s, reaching 46 in 2012.
The reported number of aggravated assaults, which bottomed out at 5 in 1995, stood at 18 in 2005 before a dramatic increase, hitting 64 by 2011.
There is one statistic which may give some hope.
According to state and federal reports, the percentage of violent and property crimes cleared in the past 10 years has hovered between about 15 percent and 22 percent. In the early 1980s, there were years when the clearance rate was 10 percent or less.
That number seems to suggest greater effectiveness on the part of police in recent years.
But as DeAndrea explained, a smaller force is facing a greater workload. The department’s 40 officers responded to 11,000 calls in 2007. In 2014, 34 officers fielded 30,000 calls, he said.
Another measure of that workload? Arrests.
According to records from the state’s Uniform Crime Reporting System website, only 976 adults were arrested in the city as recently as 2006.
Then, Hazleton police made 1,151 adult arrests in 2007. The number stayed broadly at that level until 2013, when more than 1,400 adults were arrested. It dipped in 2014 to 1,219 adult arrests, the state website indicates.
Demographics
Hazleton’s demographics shifted dramatically in the first decade of the 2000s, with a large influx of new Latino residents coming to the city.
The city’s Latino population jumped from just under 5 percent in the 2000 U.S. Census to 37 percent in the 2010 Census. The percentage is now into the 40s, DeAndrea said.
As DeAndrea also knows well, there are many non-Hispanic residents who feel strongly about the change, and who are quick to attribute the rise in crime to the rise in outsiders from a culture different than the one which has prevailed here since the early 1900s.
“The old community is afraid of the unknown,” DeAndrea said, of people whose language and customs may differ from what they have known.
It’s natural, he said, for people whose parents and grandparents knew one another for decades to feel uneasy at the prospect of no longer knowing their neighbors, of not being able to speak their language.
Those same feelings, he pointed out, existed among the longtime Anglo-Saxon residents amid the wave of Irish, Italian and Eastern European immigration to Hazleton at the turn of the 20th century.
The chief cautions against snap judgments, and hopes others will take the time to get to know their new neighbors, as he has.
DeAndrea cited as an example a frequent complaint he hears, namely of Latino residents “loitering.”
Rather, he explained, many of the city’s new residents come from warmer climates and cultures where playing checkers on the street or merely sitting on the steps watching people go by is not considered loitering, but an intrinsic part of daily life, or “free entertainment,” he said.
At the same time, DeAndrea recognizes that the city’s demographic shift has brought changes and challenges, not least for his department.
For one thing, he notes that fear of authority, and especially police, is common among many of the city’s Latino newcomers, something rooted in the political realities of their home countries.
He freely acknowledges that the number of crimes committed is, for that reason, likely higher than those actually reported.
DeAndrea also knows that the language barrier creates a hurdle for effective policing.
Among the four policemen hired by City Council on Tuesday was Pedro Bautista, who as of now is the force’s only truly bilingual officer.
DeAndrea would like more Spanish-speaking officers, and he acknowledges that he has taken heat from some in the community for saying so.
He says it’s just common sense, and to the benefit of the entire community, Spanish- and English-speaking: If you’re going to solve crimes, not being able to speak the language used by 40 percent of the city’s population is a major problem.
Statistics would seem to underscore his case, again from the state’s Uniform Crime Reporting System website. According to UCR, white non-Hispanics still accounted for the majority of arrests in Hazleton over the past decade, but the 2000s witnessed a major change there, as well.
For the first time, in 2013, Hispanic and non-Hispanic adult arrests were essentially even, at 704 Hispanics and 703 non-Hispanics, UCR data show. Just eight years earlier, in 2005, there were 806 non-Hispanics arrested and 216 Hispanics.
“I need (Spanish-speaking) officers, not interpreters,” DeAndrea said.
More cops wanted
Language aside, the chief stands firm on his position that Hazleton simply needs more police officers.
Right now, he wants to hit the 2007 level of 40. Given the current population and crime rate, he believes 50 or 60 are needed to truly begin bringing the city’s growing crime problem.
The mayor shares that view.
“The rule of thumb is two (officers) for every 1,000 people,” Yannuzzi said.
How, or when that number will ever be achieved remains to be seen.
Yannuzzi has pushed for a ballot proposal that would ask voters to approve a 1-mill property-tax increase which would generate enough money to hire 10 full-time officers. A mill is a $1 tax on each $1,000 of assessed property value. The mayor said Saturday he understands the issue will be on the ballot in November.
DeAndrea, meanwhile, suggested the city should explore a renter’s tax that might accomplish a similar end.
But both men say they would prefer full-time officers to part-timers.
DeAndrea said all part-timers must undergo the same training full time Hazleton officers do.
But because of scheduling and limited hours, he is concerned that part-timers may not be able to do the follow-up work on investigations with the same effectiveness that full-timers can.
He also said there’s no guarantee that part-timers won’t take the training they get from Hazleton and seek full time work elsewhere if it becomes available.
Councilmen’s views
Cusat and Mundie see things differently.
Between a $1.4 million minimum pension obligation, a “$6 million to $7 million” gap in revenue and the threat of nearly $3 million owed if the city turns out to be liable in connection with the illegal immigrant legal battles of the former administration, Cusat doesn’t know where the money for more full-timers might come from.
“Obviously, we’d like to hire more officers, but we need to figure out, financially, where we stand,” Cusat said.
Cusat said he believes part-timers could play an important role in helping do secondary work while full-time officers work on more pressing cases.
Among the duties part-timers could help with, he said, are traffic enforcement, transporting prisoners to Luzerne County Court in Wilkes-Barre and perhaps staffing a public service window in City Hall, which was closed several years ago.
“I like the idea of part-timers,” he said “but I’d like us to hire experienced part-timers.”
That, he said, could include retired officers from other municipalities.
Indeed, DeAndrea himself is a former trooper, who spent 26 years with the Pennsylvania State Police.
“He has been an incredible asset to the community,” Cusat said of DeAndrea.
Mundie, similarly, wants to explore hiring part-timers.
He pointed out that part-timers could help cut down on overtime costs. Like Cusat, he cited the expense of using full-time officers to transport prisoners to court.
Mundie said that if part-timers have been used successfully in other communities, he doesn’t understand why that wouldn’t be the case in Hazleton.
“How do you not try it? Are you afraid it might work? If you hire part-timers, and they don’t work, then they’re gone,” he said.