BY MIKE CETERA
Violent crime increased last year more than law enforcement experts anticipated, new data shows.
Overall, violent crime was up 1.9 percent last year.
The rising crime rates have been a concern for the Justice Department, which earlier this year blamed the increases on gangs, guns and youth violence. The Bush administration has pledged to spend $50 million this year to combat gangs and guns, and is pushing Congress for new laws to let the federal government better investigate and prosecute violent crime.
In Illinois, the new FBI data is broken down only for the biggest communities, including Aurora and Naperville. Go here for the full 2006 Crime in the United States report and here for the local data.
It's tough to get a sense of things locally in this yearly data, particularly when it comes to murder. In 2006, there were four murders in Aurora, suggesting a fairly quiet year. This year, we're at 10 so far. I'm not sure this means things are any better or worse this year.
A far more telling piece of data about the health of the police department is the clearance rate, also called the solve rate. Clearing a crime essentially means police believe they've solved it, regardless of whether an arrest or conviction has occurred. For a more thorough explananation of clearance rates, go here.
Nationally, nearly 61 percent of murders were cleared last year, the crime most likely to be solved by police. Burglary and motor vehicle theft were the two crimes least likely to be solved. Just 12.6 percent of those crimes were cleared by police last year. Find the national clearance rates for 2006 here.
Unfortunately, the FBI report doesn't appear to break down clearance rates by individual departments. This is a shame because this data can help people make a more informed opinion about the quality of their local department.
As an example, the Aurora Police Department for many years had been criticized for its "low" murder clearance rates (less than 40 percent). In 2006, the department cleared three of its four murder cases.
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