You simply can't go by the FBI UCR for crime info. That is a voluntary reporting system. Many, many departments do not report to it. The homicide numbers listed in the UCR, for instance, are thought to be less than half the actual number.
For most non-reporting departments, it’s a matter of manpower.
When the term “police department” comes up, people tend to think of the Chicago PD or the Los Angeles PD, with over 10,000 officers each. The majority of law enforcement officers in the US work for small departments, of 10-15 officers at best. I once trained a rural Sheriff’s Office that had 8 road deputies. Agencies like that don’t have the manpower to assemble and turn in non-essential, non-remunerative government reports and surveys.
Some big city departments don’t report, or under-report, for political reasons. You’d be amazed how departments “cook the books” to lower certain categories of crimes. Also, the US standard now is “incident based reporting”. If a man with a shotgun robs a group of three people, that’s three armed robberies. It goes in the stat’s as one. The truth is, violent crime is much more common than most folks are willing to believe.
I wish people knew about how the crime stats are actually manipulated. A family member at a very large city PD once told me that he had been dispatched to a report of two men shooting at a third. Since no one was hit, instead of logging it as an aggravated assault, my relative’s supervisor had him document the incident as a report of people shooting guns off within city limits. I’d be pleasantly surprised if every large city PD wasn’t playing the same games when reporting the crime stats.
My posts only represent my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policies of any employer, past or present. Obvious spelling errors are likely the result of an iPhone keyboard.
The first time in a really long time I was mortally concerned for my well being due to the predations of two others was in my current tiny town in W. Texas that has an advertised violent crime rate of 1/2500.
Another Tom Givens' saying "ain't no Mayberry's anymore"