Gilbert Police Chief Michael Soelberg said crime is down overall in town through the end of May.
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We constantly monitor our crime trends from year to year. It's going to fluctuate up or down. So we anticipate rises in crime, reduction in crime, and we look at the totality of the whole year and which way are we trending.””
The FBI is changing the way crime statistics are reported to the public, a change that may make it look like crime is exploding in Gilbert and elsewhere.
But Gilbert Police Chief Michael Soelberg has a message for the community drawn from making more of an apples-to-apples comparison on crime statistics.
“Crime's down,” he said. “We anticipate it to fluctuate, and we try to be reactive and proactive to anticipate where we'll see some surges in holidays, weekends, we staff appropriately for that — what we anticipate.”
Through May of 2023, Gilbert has two fewer violent crimes for a 1% decrease, and 74 fewer property crimes, a 6% decrease, leading to a 6% decrease overall, according to Gilbert Police Department data. Looked at against the population, incidents are down from 5.09 per 1,000 people to 4.81 per 1,000.
Gilbert has been one of the nation’s safest among municipalities with populations of at least 100,000, as measured by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report released each fall. In the latest report from fall 2022, which is based on 2021 statistics, Gilbert ranked fourth in the nation behind Yonkers, New York; McKinney, Texas; and Frisco, Texas.
The FBI report is based on voluntary crime statistics reporting from more 18,000 law-enforcement agencies nationwide. It measures each agency’s statistics for what it classifies as “Part 1” crimes. Those include the violent crimes of criminal homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, and the property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.
What Soelberg sees is small fluctuations, up and down, over time. With small raw numbers, it does not take much to show large percentage changes. For example, if there are 10 homicides in a year, an increase of one the next year would show a 10% increase, which could be alarming to some people.
At the same time, Gilbert has so many more property crimes than violent crimes, a decrease in property crime can easily swallow up a small increase in violent crime and lead to Part 1 crimes being down overall.
The numbers also can be misinterpreted easily. Soelberg said in 2021, Gilbert had nine homicides, but of those nine, six were DUI-related vehicular homicides. Only three were domestic-related or stranger homicides, what most people would think of as a homicide, Soelberg said.
Soelberg said he pays close attention to crimes per 1,000 people as opposed to raw numbers or percentage increases. He said as Gilbert grows in population, more crimes can be expected overall, so the rate per 1,000 gives a better handle on trends.
Circumstances also can affect perceptions, such as the case of two unrelated homicides within just over an hour on June 18. That caused Soelberg to issue a statement to the community to reassure it that Gilbert remains a safe community. The timing made for the anomaly.
“When you have two homicides within an hour in a safe city like Gilbert, it can freak people out — understandably,” he said. “It's just one of those things that it shocks. You don't expect that.”
The change in reporting systems could lead to such perceptions, too. The FBI previously was using what it called the Summary Based Reporting system, which classified each criminal by the highest-ranking crime committed, with homicide at the top of the scale.
In its place, it has begun using the “National Incident Based Reporting System,” or NIBRS. Now each separate crime from an incident is reported.
Thus if an assault turned into a rape and homicide, those would be three incidents under NIBRS. Under the previous system, it was one incident classified as a homicide.
Soelberg said the department will work to educate the community on how those statistics work when it unveils an online dashboard that residents can use to get a snapshot of their community’s safety. That should be available later this year.
If there is a trend in increasing crime in town, Soelberg said it is in online fraud and similar cyber crime. Case loads for detectives in this area are up 30%, he said, but it is “Part 2” crime under the FBI’s classification system and does not show up in the national statistics.
Overall, though, these are good times for Gilbert’s safety by the data.
“We constantly monitor our crime trends from year to year,” Soelberg said. “It's going to fluctuate up or down. So we anticipate rises in crime, reduction in crime, and we look at the totality of the whole year and which way are we trending.”
Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on Twitter. We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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