Report claims Nevada is the most dangerous state, again

A new version of an annual analysis of FBI Crime data by CQ Press shows that Nevada is ranked "least favorably."
I'm very suspicious of this kind of analysis. First, combining crime reports by state does not make a great deal of sense. Crime in New York City isn't really strongly related to crime in Buffalo, for example. Since so much of the population is focused in Clark County, a look at crime here in Nevada is really a look at state-wide crime is almost like a diluted look at crime in metro Las Vegas.
When you compare the states, Nevada comes in with the highest crime rate for this year's report. Because of reporting delays, this year's report is based on 2009 crime reports. Crime Tracker 3's weekly look at crime trends, on the other hand, uses data that is current to the last complete week (i.e. our statistics are between one and seven days delayed, depending on the day of the week of our report.)
It should be noted that the FBI, which compiles the data CQ Press uses to generate its reports, discourages the use of the statistics to make "rankings." The FBI is also working on a more thorough system to collect crime data beyond the ten crime categories tracked in the Uniform Crime Reports.

Crime by the Numbers - Convention Center Area

As the Crime Tracker 3 team looks back at crime trends for 2009 and asks about police priorities in 2010, one area of focus that emerges is Sexual Assault. As 2009 ended, there were more than 1,500 sexual assaults in Metro's jurisdiction, an increase of more than 8%.
Last week, we asked the Captain from Enterprise Area about that trend. The trend is different in the Convention Center Area, because of the nature of that area. Convention Center sees fewer cases of incest and more "acquaintance-related" sexual assaults, especially incidents where the two acquaintances only met the night of the incident.
Captain Charles Hank talks about the subject, and what he and his officers are already doing about it.

Auto burglary was also a concern in the Convention Center area in 2009. We also asked Capt. Hank about that subject.

Crime by the Numbers: Metro South East

Metro's South East Area command saw 20 of the 108 homicides so far this year in Metro's jurisdiction. The homicide rate there is up 54% from last year. That's the highest rate of increase in all of Metro. Overall, Metro's homicides are down a little more than nine percent.
Sophia Choi talked to Captain David O'Leary about homicides, and how he and his officers are working to reduce their frequency.

Hate in Nevada on the Rise

The FBI's annual report on Hate Crime for 2008 shows increases across the board for the LVMPD's jurisdiction. Here are the results, as reported by the FBI.

Race bias: 39 incidents, up 116%.
Religious bias: 18 incidents, up 28%.
Sexual orientation bias: 12 incidents, up 100%.
Ethnic bias: 15 incidents, up 7%

Given the first minority major-party presidential candidate, and the prominence of gay rights ballot measures, one might make the assumption that racial and sexual orientation bias incidents may have increased and peaked around Election Day 2008. The statistics do not show that. There were 24 incidents in the first quarter of 2004 in Clark County, 36 in the second quarter, 14 in the third, and 10 in the fourth quarter.
North Las Vegas Police reported two incidents of racial bias and three incidents of ethinic bias in 2008. Henderson, Boulder City, and Mesquite Police reported no incidents.

For some national perspective, here's a story from the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI is blaming sharp increases in hate crimes involving gays and religious groups for an overall rise of about 2 percent in hate crimes last year.
Data released today indicate that hate crimes based on sexual orientation rose nearly 11 percent, while religion-based crimes were up nearly 9 percent. However, the federal figures showed that racially motivated hate crimes fell less than 1 percent.
Overall, roughly a third of all hate crimes involved vandalism or property damage, while 30 percent involved some form of intimidation and another 30 percent physical attacks on individuals, including seven murders.
Officials say the increase in numbers may also be linked to the growing number of agencies tracking hate crimes.
Today's release comes less than a month after President Barack Obama signed a bill expanding the number of categories of those covered by the federal law against hate crimes. The law now covers crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.