Our officers have been at the forefront of figuring out how to protect our city. When we have a safer community, we have a community that people want to invest in. This is real nuts-and-bolts police work that gets to the base cause of crime.” Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, Arizona Republic, “Mesa’s crime rate for major offenses is lower than in 1963, Mayor lauds preventive strategies by police,” Aug. 2, 2012
Mayor Smith was commenting on the announcement that serious crime in Mesa continues to drop thanks in large part to the police department’s anti-crime strategy of targeting career criminals, gang members, and street-level drug activity and utilizing the latest technologies available from the Mesa Police crime lab and crime information sharing via the East Valley Fusion Center housed at the Mesa PD.
According to the Aug. 2 East Valley Tribune story, “Mesa crime keeps falling,” Mesa police arrested 18 percent more suspects in the first half of this year for serious felony crimes. Mesa’s crime rate translates to 36 Part 1 crimes, per 1,000 residents, compared with 40 Part 1 crimes per 1,000 residents in 1963. Part 1 crimes are considered serious felony crimes.
Mesa once led the East Valley in crime. Not anymore.
In 2011 Tempe’s Part 1 crime rate climbed to 60 per 1,000 residents. Scottsdale and Chandler Part 1 crime rates remain in the low 30s. Gilbert’s dropped to 19 crimes per 1,000 residents. The statewide average is 39 Part 1 per 1,000 residents.
Mesa Police Chief Frank Milstead, a retired Phoenix police commander who led Phoenix’s Major Offender Bureau, said the Mesa police department first made significant gains five years ago when it adopted COMPSTAT to track crimes and deploy officers.
Milstead added, “Mesa officers have driven down crime by making more arrests, including a 36 percent spike in drug dealers taken off the streets and making drug arrests a high priority because users and dealers have such a broad impact on the community.”
What makes Mesa’s crime lowering accomplishments even more impressive is that they’ve done it with budget cuts that left the city with only 766 officers, down from over 900.
More money and officers isn’t always the solution to crime. Well-led and highly-motivated officers are extremely important.
Although most career criminals aren’t afraid of prison, they still don’t want to get caught. Mesa has greatly increased their chances of being apprehended making the state’s third largest city an increasingly unwelcome place for criminals. But it’s a much safer place for those who want to live and work in Mesa.
Smith’s comments that “When we have a safer community, we have a community that people want to invest in,” are dead on. Under his leadership, Mesa has evolved into a leader in public safety. While “catch phrase” policing is the rage, especially the term “intelligence led policing,” real police work that makes communities safer requires more than police chiefs looking pretty in their uniforms and regurgitating scripted lines of how wonderful they’re doing. Real police work is dirty, dangerous, involves risk, and requires chiefs who have first-hand experience fighting crime on the streets, and haven’t spent their careers pushing paper, to lead officers and design a strategy to attack crime. Milstead definitely fits that bill.
Too many police agencies have adhered to the kinder and cuddlier principles of “community based policing” where criminals have prospered and citizens suffered.
Mesa police have shown that the only touchy-feely policing that will take place in Arizona’s third largest city is when they slap the cuffs on criminals.
Crooks in jail means lower crime. Mesa PD’s proven that. Mesa is a city where the criminal’s fear of police will make residents safer and a place where businesses want to grow and invest.
The police officers and support staff of the Mesa PD, along with Mayor Smith and Chief Milstead, are to congratulated.
Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.
hillstreet posted at 9:19 am on Fri, Aug 10, 2012.
Credit where it is due, agree. Let's hope the decrease in crime continues. But after a lifetime of policing I have also learned these rises and dips in crime rates are influenced by a number of factors, the police being just one. The police are a little too quick to take credit for what may be a statiscal hiccup in crime reduction, but never take responsibility when crime goes up. It has to work both ways.
msking posted at 10:25 am on Fri, Aug 10, 2012.
What you have outlined is the dictatorship of the future. It was said in George Orwell's 1984 that you can do everything with bayonets but sit on them. To have a society that is ruled by fear an intimidation at the hands of the police is not a society that I want to live in.
Engaged Voter posted at 12:56 pm on Fri, Aug 10, 2012.
Before congratulating the police for lower crime statistics (I don't recall seeing any articles where they are taken to task for HIGHER crime rates), how about discerning the real reasons for the reduction in crime.
I am not a proponent of SB1070, however, it is indeed a strange coincidence that the crime rate lowered at the same time the workable portions of SB1070 were implemented.
I've also noticed fewer gang affiliated persons hanging out at Restaurant Sinaloa in Mesa, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the reduction of illegal aliens, as My. Richardson has assured us time and again that gang related crime has absolutely nothing at all to do with illegal immigration. ;)
Engaged Voter posted at 3:46 pm on Fri, Aug 10, 2012.
"What makes Mesa’s crime lowering accomplishments even more impressive is that they’ve done it with budget cuts that left the city with only 766 officers, down from over 900."
That's suspicious, not impressive.
That 766 officers can do a better job than over 900 officers doing the same tasks speaks volumes about the lack of coherent leadership over the last few years. But at least we're improving, right?
PCSO101 posted at 4:54 pm on Fri, Aug 10, 2012.
Bill, have you no ORIGINAL thoughts or ideas? Your commentary is a direct off-shoot of an AZ Republic article from earlier this week! In fact, nearly everything you write about is based on works completed by other journalist. Your work is unoriginal, repetitive, redundant and increasingly more irrelevant to current day policing. At least you didn't cite your 20 years experience as a homicide detective, 19 years experience as a sex crimes detective, 23 years experience as a Master Officer, 17 years experience as a fraud investigator, etc. I'm surprised you don't take a shot at our Sheriff, oh I'm sorry, there was no article written this week about him, thus you have nothing to springboard off of - no original ideas. Try writing about schools again, at least that required you do produce some original work.
Ok, let me guess....response from Bill Richardson: Thanks for reading my article. [beam]
Leon Ceniceros posted at 7:24 pm on Fri, Aug 10, 2012.
Crime in Mesa actually went ...."UP"....not down in 2011. According to the Crime Statistics that were provided by the Mesa Police Department to the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
2011 - Total Crimes = 17,029
Violent Crimes = 1838
Murders = 18
Rapes = 131
Robberies = 497
Aggravated Assaults = 1192
2010 - Total Crimes = 16,725
Violent Crimes = 1790
Murders = 15
Rapes = 124
Robberies = 511
Aggravated Assaults = 1140
Looks to me that the year that................SB 1070....was signed into law was the..."SAFEST" year that the City of Mesa ever had. If the good Citizens of Mesa feel that they have to congratulate anyone for the drop in the Crime Rate....they should be congratulating............Governor Jan Brewer, past Speaker Kirk Adams, past Senate President Russell Pearce "the Father of SB 1070".
A "Special Thank You" should go also to the Men and Women who serve in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department for their continuing vigilance in apprehending Illegal Aliens under the fantastic Leadership of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
SB 1070 and the Maricopa County Sheriff Department have made tens of thousands of Illegal Aliens realize that they need to return to the Country of Birth or move to a "Sanctuary State" like Utah, Nevada, California or New Mexico.
chatmandu002 posted at 9:13 am on Sat, Aug 11, 2012.
Bill,
I see you managed to get in a hit on Tempe police again. I consider SB 1070 as the main reason crime was down. So many of the illegals went to other "sanctuary" cities and took the crime with them.
billrichardson posted at 7:11 am on Sun, Aug 12, 2012.
Hillstreet, I agree with you about the police taking credit when crime is down and never admit failure when it rises.. I remember when Mesa crime was pushing 100 Part 1 crimes per 1,000 residents. A lot of that was due to organizational inefficiency and poor leadership. The same problems that still plague some police departments.
Engagedvoter, How do you know these people are gang affiliated?
PCSO101, Thank you, your sheriff and his staff for reading my columns.
Chatmandu002, Don't you think Tempe having over triple the crime as Gilbert, double the crime of Scottsdale, a crime rate 24 points higher than Mesa's and 21 points higher than the average crime rate in Arizona is worth mentioning when talking about Mesa's success? I'd say Tempe has a crime problem and maybe they can learn from the other cities who are obviously doing something right.
downtownresident posted at 8:22 am on Sun, Aug 12, 2012.
Mesa has finally gotten away from promoting from within the Mormon ranks of long time employees and gone outside the good-ole-boy, Mormon only, promotion/hiring pool for some real talent.
I drive Broadway Road every day. I can't help but think that, as misguided as it is, SB1070 must have had an impact also.
Engaged Voter posted at 10:54 am on Mon, Aug 13, 2012.
"Engagedvoter, How do you know these people are gang affiliated?"
Is this a rhetorical question, or one meant in jest?
Have you ever bothered to drive by Restaurant SINALOA, or stop in for a meal?
(I'm going to guess No, since it would make your question nonsensical)
Downtownresident, I've noticed that too...and I don't even have decades of law enforcement experience. ;)
hillstreet posted at 11:29 am on Mon, Aug 13, 2012.
"I'm surprised you don't take a shot at our Sheriff, oh I'm sorry, there was no article written this week about him"
PCSO101, was this meant as a joke???? Your so called sheriff does not need Bill's help, he puts his foot deep inside every time he opens his mouth.
Leon Ceniceros posted at 10:48 pm on Mon, Aug 13, 2012.
Someone is talking about ..."apples and oranges"...when comparing Tempe to Gilbert and Scottsdale.
Tempe median age = 28yo
Tempe per capita income = $22,406.00
Tempe has 14% of the population "below" the poverty level.
Gilbert median age = 31.2yo
Gilbert per capita income = $30,559.00
Gilbert has only 3.2% of the population below the poverty level.
Scottsdale median age = 42yo
Scottsdale per capita income = $49,128.00
Scottsdale has only 5.2% of the population below the poverty level
Cities with "younger" median age population = more crime
Cities with lower per capita income = more crime
Cities with higher poverty levels = more crime
Tempe will .........."ALWAYS"....have more crime than Gilbert or Scottsdale or Mesa (the largest population of Mormons of any city in the World including Salt Lake City).
Statistics was a class that I took at John C. Fremont High School back in 1961. Demographics was one of the subjects that was covered. The Debate Club taught us to look at all sides and as many facts as we could research of a discussion and to leave our personal, political, and idealogical agenda out. As Sergeant Joe Friday would say on the TV......"the facts, Ma'am, nothing but the facts".
901fan posted at 10:37 pm on Thu, Aug 16, 2012.
Leon,
True 2011 was slightly higher (although some would consider them statistically similar) if you can be intellectually honest you would have to admit that crime is in fact DOWN in Mesa. I am certain that these facts pain you to admit but 2011 is nearly half the crime rate of 2002. See for yourself from the very stats you quoted. If you would have looked further you may not have posted that comment. But then again the truth may not coincide with your agenda. Good day sir.
2011
Violent crimes 17029
Property crimes 15091
2010
Violent crime 16725
Property Crime 14935
2009
Violent Crimes 18164
Property Crimes 16164
2008
Violent Crimes 19878
Property Crime 17589
2007
Violent Crimes 22223
Property Crimes 19999
2006
Violent Crimes 23426
Property Crimes 21342
2005
Violent Crimes 26403
Property Crimes 24123
2004
Violent Crimes 25916
Property Crimes
23416
2003
Violent Crimes 28518
Property Crimes 26172
2002
Violent Crimes 33402
Property Crimes 30515