Thank You Chief Johansen

Frank’s friends have been beating the drum on crime.  They say it’s way up, but they can fix it.  They seem to think that everything in our city is terrible, and are promising us everything but a chicken in every pot. Then again, it’s the silly season.

I think Chief Eric Johansen is doing a fine job, as he has always done for our city.  I’m glad that the mayor and council took their time to do a fair and thorough search, as demanded by both law and common sense.  He’s a fine leader and the successes of his department demonstrate that. He himself says that “crime is much lower here than in comparable cities” and that in violent crime, “the offender almost always knows (or is related to) the victim.”  Sounds to me like he’s saying Peekskill’s streets are safe.

The Chief’s statistics on total number of violent crimes are pretty hard to argue with:

•2006 — 68

•2007 — 73

•2008 — 54

•2009 — 34

•2010 — 31

•2011 — 36

•2012 — 37

•2013 — 14 (through May)

That hasn’t stopped Frank’s pseudonymous supporters.  They argue that these numbers prove an increase in crime.  Frank, himself, broke his usual internet silence to post that these numbers showed “violent crime rising out of control” (is that really your experience, or the experience of the ever increasing numbers of out of town patrons of our thriving downtown) and even suggested that Chief Johansen was cooking the numbers, calling them “twisting of facts and outright lying.”  How disrespectful. 

Even without taking population growth into account, the yearly totals clearly show a crime rate that’s been trending down for six years.  Mayor Foster was sworn into office on January 1, 2008.  The last two years the GOP held the mayor’s seat and a council majority are the two worst years on which Chief Johansen released stats last May.  Can they really fix the problem they say they see?  Well, it’s awfully hard to fix a problem that’s just not there.