Summary 2004

In reviewing the police activity for the calendar year 2004, it is important to note that the statistical reporting procedure has completely changed.  As mentioned in last year’s annual report, our statistics were reported under the Uniform Crime Report.  2004 crime statistics adhere to the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) which is being required as the result of federal guidelines and mandates.  The new NIBRS will give us better comparatives with the neighboring cities; however, it is completely inaccurate with previously kept statistics under the Uniform Crime Report.  We’ve encountered several difficulties in our transition.  The foremost problem has occurred in trying to resolve software issues with our New World reporting system and the State of Utah.  The State of Utah receives our statistical information via computer and the two systems have failed to merge.  Every month this results in a hand search by our Dispatch Supervisor and several phone calls to resolve differences with the State of Utah.  This is the primary delay in the Annual Report this year; however, we feel that most of the reporting problems via the computer have been resolved.  With the NIBRS based reporting, we have made changes to the statistical report. 

We continue to monitor the eight major category offenses as required by the FBI.  We are happy to report that in the calendar year of 2004 we had no murders or manslaughters reported.  The total number of rapes for adults was sixteen; of those sixteen reports, there are no stranger rape cases that are active.  As you are aware, almost all of the rape cases occur by a known suspect; however, only about half of these cases are prosecuted successfully.  The statistical increase of rapes is skewed as it compares with last year.  Under the new reporting system, more sex crimes are included under the rape category. 
We had twelve reported robberies that fall under the old category of strong arm or aggravated robbery.  Both the rape and robbery category are consistent with previous years.

In the area of burglary, 2004 saw 109 residential burglaries and 33 business burglaries.  This is a slight downward trend from the previous year with the reduction being mostly in the category of business burglaries.  Vehicle thefts for 2004 are recorded at 71.  This is an increase with years previous.  All of the surrounding cities are seeing similar increases of vehicle theft.  102 incidents of shoplifting were reported.  Shoplifting has decreased when we take into account the reporting differences from the old to new system.  303 vehicle burglaries were reported for 2004.  Given our statistical reporting variances between two systems, this number would be about the same.  Twenty-three bicycles were stolen during the calendar year of 2004.  This is a downward trend we have seen for the last few years.

In 2004 we arrested 1,160 adults, and 515 juveniles were referred to Juvenile Court.  Compared to previous years, we see a slight increase with the adult arrests and a decrease with the juvenile arrests.  Combined numbers of arrests remain about the same.  We have no sociological information to describe why adult arrests are up slightly and juvenile arrests are somewhat down.

Areas of police enforcement outside the eight major category offenses show that we had 967 traffic accidents where injury did not occur.  We had 97 traffic accidents that did result in personal injury and 123 accidents that were classified as hit and run because one of the drivers did not notify the other owner/driver involved in the accident.  Most of the hit and run accidents occurred in parking lots.

In the area of citations, 1,618 hazardous citations, 997 non hazardous citations, and 907 warning tickets were issued.  

In 2004 we arrested 49 drivers for driving under the influence of alcohol/drugs.  This is consistent with years previous where we average about 45.

Overall, we handled about the same number of requests for service city wide as we had in 2003.  We did see in the year 2004, two areas of slight increases in crime reporting.  The two areas of increase occurred specifically in personal identity theft under the category of fraud and more stolen vehicles.  Overall, our crime statistics continue to remain low as do the surrounding cities of Bountiful, with some minor variations.

With each successive year on the new reporting program, we will continue to show comparative statistics from year to year so that you can track crime trends with us.