Earlier this week, the Commercial reported Pine Bluff’s omission from a list of “Most Dangerous” cities in America. On the one hand, because the list only included towns of at least 100,000 people, Pine Bluff would not have been counted, irrespective of the crime rate. On the other, however, while that matter tells us something about crime in other places, it is instructive to examine what we do know about crime in Pine Bluff with respect to the rest of the nation.
Using the monthly Uniform Crime Reports that the Pine Bluff Police Department routinely releases as well as historical data from the Arkansas Crime Information Center (to which PBPD reports incident data) and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, we can begin to make comparisons about the nature and magnitude of local crime.
First, we can address the murder rate. Since 1999, Pine Bluff has experienced a murder rate that is at least double the national average and in several years as high as five or six times the national rate.
The rates of forcible rape are closer to national averages, but still consistently higher and in one year (2008), more than twice the national average. The same can be said of aggravated assaults. During the period 1999 – 2010 aggravated assaults nationally averaged approximately 300 per 100,000 population. During that same time, aggravated assaults in Pine Bluff averaged 532 per 100,000 population.
Burglaries, which have been especially consequent in Pine Bluff, (because they provide a good proxy indicator for drug abuse and addiction) averaged approximately 1,458 per 100,000, whereas, the national average hovered around 730 per 100,000.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The same degrees of difference can be observed for other crimes tracked by the UCR. The aggregate pictures of crime are necessarily bleak in equal measure.
These figures are important for a couple of reasons. First, they clearly indicate that something is inherently different about the way crime is regarded, tolerated and committed in Pine Bluff with respect to averages across the nation. If we were to make a fair comparison between Pine Bluff and other cities of similar size, we would see that we are indeed among the more crime-prone places in the nation. That is an indisputable fact. No politician, no police administrator, no promoter can change the grim reality of it.
Second, if one were to examine the national trends in crime across the past 15 years, a discernable and consistent downward trend would be observed. This is not the case in Pine Bluff. In fact, several types of crime have stayed constant or risen. When the police administration touts monthly drops or year-to-year comparisons, they never seem to grasp (let alone own) the fact that these decreases are often eclipsed by national rates; or they exist within the statistical margin of error. In other words, any observed improvement is just as likely to be an artifact of random chance as it is a reflection of overt efforts to address crime. In plain language, the monthly ebb and flow (as well as year-to-year comparisons) are dubious indicators of the general climate of crime. Only when we pull back the lens do we get a reliable and valid perspective. Unfortunately, that perspective substantiates a bitter truth: crime in Pine Bluff rages as great as it ever has.
To be clear, this isn’t the police department’s fault. Just as the fire department does not cause fires, the police department does not cause crime. As the Bard aptly wrote — the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. What we fail to recognize as a community is that we have allowed ourselves to become enslaved to a culture of crime that undermines the considerable improvements made in other spheres.
We are addicts to the drug of crime. As with all addictions, acknowledgement of the problem is the first step to cure.
The facts presented above should serve as our opening admission and acknowledgement. What happens next is in the hands of the people.