The Orange County Register reported earlier this week on the release of violent crime statistics. I’m curious, if the management of the Sheriff’s Department is as bad as people are saying, why are the #1 and #10 cities in the nation OC Sheriff’s Department contract cities?ÂÂ
No matter what the problems may or may not be with Sheriff Carona, the “department” seems to be running fine.
Tell us what you think!
The study was based on per-capita rates for violent crimes.
By ANNIE BURRIS
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTERMISSION VIEJO A new, controversial study based on annual FBI crime statistics names Mission Viejo the safest city in the nation.
Following Mission Viejo was Lake Forest, ranked as 10th, and Irvine, ranked as 11th.
The 14th annual City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan American, released on Friday, looked at about 400 cities in the U.S. with at least 75,000 people. The study was based on per-capita rates for homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft.
“I haven’t seen the study but it doesn’t surprise me,” said sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino. “I think it is a prime example of the community working well with the police.”
The American Society of Criminology discounted the report calling it “an irresponsible misuse” of crime data.
In June, Irvine as labeled as America’s safest city by the FBI’s preliminary Uniform Crime Report, which was compiled with from more than 11,700 law enforcement agencies across the country.
City Crime Rankings was compiled by Kathleen O’Leary Morgan and Scott Morgan and published by CQ Press, a private research group that reviews crime data from the FBI.
The study assigns a crime score to each city, with zero representing the national average. Mission Viejo’s score was minus 82, followed by cities in New York, New Jersey and Texas.
In the study, Detroit pushed past St. Louis to become the nation’s most dangerous city.
To view the study visit www.cqpress.com.
The Associated Press and Reporter Kimberly Edds contributed to this report.
I tend to agree as it relates to patrol operations. There are however, questions concerning the jails and some expenditures seem to be excessive (the mobile command center and executive use of the helicopter jump out at me). Note: I don’t mean to imply that the mobile command center itself is excessive, but I remember thinking that some features seemed “out there” when I first read about it.
But back to Lake Forest and Mission Viejo: how much of this is a function of the Sheriff’s department and how much is a function of the community? What would the results be in Santa Ana if the Sheriff’s Department took over? If Paul Walters becomes Sheriff, we might get to see what would happen if SAPD took over in MIssion Viejo and Lake Forest but there are so many layers of management that this would be hard to tell.
Ultimately, the Sheriff’s department is a large enough organization that the Sheriff is only a figure head. The command staff is deep enough and the work force large enough that they have a large number of qualified applications to choose from when commanders retire that the department, as an organization, pretty much runs itself.