Lakeland PD Releases October 2008 UCR Data

The October 2008 Uniform Crime Report data has been posted on our web site. These numbers are preliminary pending end of the year audits, but you can get a general sense of current crime trends in our community from this report.

Through the end of October, year to date figures for 2008 show violent crime is down 15% from the same period last year. Property crime in 2008 is down 2% from last year.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Comments

[Bruce]

I think there's a much better way to present this information. The cumulative data seems, at first glace, to show increasing crime throughout the year, when you really wanted to emphasize the decrease from 2007 to 2008. If instead of showing cumulative data, you showed each individual month's data, there would be no visual increase over time. People would then be able to focus on the shorter 2008 bar for each month.

It would also help to place 2008 after 2007; that would make more sense and provide a visual decrease as people read left to right. Currently, people see the shorter bar, then the higher bar.

Additionally, showing just each month's data, rather than cumulative data, would make the scale smaller (e.g., 0-1000 crimes instead of 0-7000), which would then allow a larger visual difference between the the bars for 2007 and 2008. That would provide further visual emphasis on the decrease.