The latest FDLE report on crime in the state of Florida found that Leon County was ranked number one in crimes per 100,000 residents for 2014.
Tallahassee Reports investigated the numbers and found that incidents in the City of Tallahassee was the cause for the number one ranking.
Without the city numbers, the county jurisdiction was below the state average of crimes per 100,000 residents.
In an attempt to understand how crime in Tallahassee propelled Leon County to a number one ranking, Tallahassee Reports gathered crime rate date for the City of Tallahassee and the state of Florida for the period from 2000 to 2014. The graph below shows a plot of the data.
Click on graph to enlarge.
The graph shows that the crime rate in Florida has been in a steady decline since 2000. In the year 2000, the state of Florida reported 5,604 crimes per 100,000 residents. That number steadily decreased to 3,451 crimes per 100,000 in 2014.
The City of Tallahassee saw a steep decline in crime from 2000 to 2006. In 2000 there were 8,345 crimes per 100,000 residents. The number of crimes decreased to 5,287 per 100,000 residents in 2006.
The graph shows that the decline in crime rate for Tallahassee during this period was at a faster rate than the decline for the state of Florida.
However things began to change in 2006.
The graph shows that while the state of Florida crime continued on a downward trend from 2006 to 2914, the crime rate in Tallahassee began an upward trend.
Include on the graph is the number of City of Tallahassee sworn officer in 2008 and 2014. In 2008 the City of Tallahassee had 359 sworn officers and in 2014 this number was 355.
Tallahassee Reports is in the process of retrieving archived budget data for the years from 2000-2006 to investigate any factors that might have contributed to the change in the crime rate trend in the City of Tallahassee that began in 2006.
Data Shows City Crime Rate Began to Increase in 2006 added by Staff on
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And Gannett, with their great watchdog skills, took control of the Democrat in the fall of 2005…just sayin’.
Jones became police chief in 2007.
Awesome reporting! Would be interested to see if there was one or more specific categories of crime that spurred this trend. Likewise, the number of sworn officers per year back to 2000 would be interesting to see. As such, could possibly answer the question, “did the number of sworn officers increase from 2000 to 2008, thus, possibly contributing to the dramatic decrease in the rate of crime?” That info would be a great addition to this significant chart as well as lines for annual budgets. Good going!!
Uhm, Katrina?