LAKE COUNTY — It”s a simple equation, but not so simple a story. Lake County residents may be disturbed when they discover crime rates are high in their community, but the numbers provide helpful information to officials, and for residents when choosing where to live. When it comes to crime statistics, it”s fairly easy to determine the safest areas of a county by comparing population with raw crime data, according to David Aldous, professor of statistics at UC Berkeley.
“You take into account the number of crimes, and then divide it by 1,000 [population] for small communities like those in your county,” Aldous advised.
After contacting the Lake County Sheriff”s Department, the Lakeport Police Department and the Clearlake Police Department, they provided the Record-Bee with the number of crimes for 2005 and 2006.
The Sheriff”s Department”s statistics showed much higher crime rates for the communities of Kelseyville for property crimes, violent crimes and drug and alcohol crimes for 2006. For the community of Lakeport, the statistics showed the highest number of sex crimes in the county.
But the communities the LCSD defines are approximate, and do not necessarily follow political boundaries. For example, the report shows 7 rapes for Lakeport while the Lakeport Police Department reports no rapes for 2006 within city limits. And Lake County Sheriff Rodney Mitchell says raw numbers alone don”t paint a whole picture. “All data has to be analyzed and analyzed comparatively. The nature of the offenses can drive up the data. A hypothetical example would be say, one person commits several burglaries at one time in Kelseyville?that can drive up the data.”
He gave another hypothetical example using the town of Lower Lake. He said because the town has a large high school, the population is more condensed at one period, meaning more crimes may occur. The same goes for the city of Lakeport, he said, where county and other employees flock during the day and can boost incidents in the data due to a high population density not corresponding to the actual population living there. “Before one reaches an opinion about crime in an area, all those factors have to be considered,” Mitchell said.
But those factors are not usually considered when jurisdictions publish their data, said Aldous. “That would be pretty difficult to do. Sure you may have 10,000 people in Lakeport during the day in their jobs and that could increase crime, but it would take calling each of the employers in the city to find out that number. The analysis would be complex.”
He said to conduct this type of analysis, a statistician would have to compare day-time crime rates with other communities” rates as well as night-time crime rates.
Crime statistics from the Lake County Sheriff”s Department reported 45,668 total crime incidents in 2006 for unincorporated parts of the county. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2006 estimated population was 65,933. That means there were 45.67 crimes per 1,000 population. The city of Lakeport and the city of Clearlake are not included in that count.
For Lakeport in 2006, there were 226 crimes reported by the city of Lakeport”s Police Department, equaling .23 crimes per 1,000 people. The city of Clearlake totaled 815 crimes in 2006, or .82 crimes per 1,000 people. Clearlake has a population of 14,877 for 2006, and Lakeport a population of 5,234, according to the census.
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com
