ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV

One of Mark Twain’s favorite sayings (often incorrectly attributed to him — the actual originator is unclear) was, “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics.�

Also unclear is the first person to coin the acronym GIGO — garbage in, garbage out.

Both are directly applicable to some current confusion over Tucson’s violent crime statistics.

On May 1, The ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV published an op-ed essay from Austin VanDerHeyden, municipal affairs liaison for the Goldwater Institute. Headlined “As violent crime skyrockets, Pima County plans to set more criminals free,â€� the piece said that “Tucson police reported a 75% spike in violent crime in 2023, with aggravated assaults rising at 88%, homicides rising 107%, and sexual assaults rising a whopping 188%.â€�

In the metadata attached was a link to the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s statewide crime statistics, which DPS collates from data reported by individual law-enforcement agencies from around the state.

The statistics quoted in the Goldwater Institute piece were surprising to many people who were under the impression that violent crime was declining, not rising, in Tucson.

A real headscratcher: When we looked at the cited DPS link, the data there reflected precisely the opposite trend: A 43.55% drop in homicide, a 50.17% drop in aggravated assault, a 63.24% drop in robbery and a 38.02% drop in sexual assault.

So we reached out to Bart Graves of DPS’ public information office. After some research, he let us know the following:

The numbers cited by Goldwater had indeed been presented on the DPS site in late April — before updated data were received from the Tucson Police Department. The numbers were very far from reality, because not even the 2022 Tucson Police Department stats were complete at that time, much less the 2023 numbers.

But here’s the rub: The updated statistics on the DPS site, showing the big drops in all categories of violent crime, were also inaccurate, because only 40% of the 2023 crime numbers had been sent by TPD to DPS.

So, more reporting was required.

Finally, a request to Tucson Police Department brought updated statistics from Aeric Koerner, analysis administrator for TPD. Now, at last, the picture becomes clearer.

What we’re looking at here is a significant, consistent and encouraging decline in violent crime in Tucson from 2021 through the first four months of 2024.

Tucson Police Department investigated the homicide deaths of 86 victims in 2021. In 2022, that number was 75. In 2023, the drop was greater, down to 59. Through May 14 of this year, the homicide victim count within Tucson city limits is 18.

In 2021, reported sexual assaults in Tucson were 483. In 2022, 401. In 2023, 379. As of May 14 this year, 121.

The robberies category showed the most dramatic decline, from 1,130 in 2021 to 1,088 in 2022, and only 746 in 2023. Through May 14, the number for 2024 is 250.

If you just compare 2022 to 2023, as the Goldwater piece did, here are the percentage declines year over year: Homicides, down 21.4%; sexual assaults, down 5.2%; robberies, down a whopping 31.5%; and aggravated assault, down 3.8%, for a total violent-crime decrease of 11.9%.

The Goldwater Institute piece, leaning heavily on the inaccurate data, went on to say some pretty snarky things about Tucson and Pima County governance, including “Elected officials are still siding with criminals over law-abiding constituents,� “by all objective standards, Pima County’s criminal justice system is a complete failure� and “sadly, Pima County officials seemingly have no intention of changing the way things operate.�

We certainly wonder why it takes so long for Tucson to report its crime statistics to the DPS — and why the DPS site doesn’t reveal the limited nature of the data it presents. But all of that is secondary to the fact that indeed, violent crime is consistently on the decline here.

Given the correct crime statistics, perhaps the Goldwater Institute should set its sights on its home county of Maricopa, where the violent crime rate exceeds Tucson’s.

For all the criticism of County Attorney Laura Conover, the Pima County Board of Supervisors and others, they are clearly doing a lot of things right.

The inaccurate statistics Goldwater depended on seem to have fit its desired narrative. We’ve seen similar bloviating from the Trump campaign about skyrocketing national crime rates, when the reverse is true.

Even one violent crime — one homicide, one rape, one robbery, one aggravated assault — is a tragedy. Clearly, the numbers are still way too high. But Tucson can and should feel good about the trend — however inconvenient that may be for some agendas and narratives.