Marksville more ‘dangerous’ than last year

Once again, Marksville is “statistically” one of the “most dangerous” cities in the state, based on FBI crime data on violent and property crimes. The other eight Avoyelles municipalities have no reported crime for the year covered or are not listed in the report.

If you believe the way the statistics are interpreted by online rating sites, the “Broken Wheel City” is even more dangerous than before.

The Only In Your State (onlyinyourstate.com) and Roadsnacks (roadsnacks.net) websites have issued their annual rankings of the “10 Most Dangerous” cities in Louisiana.

Only municipalities with 5,000 or more residents were analyzed for the “most dangerous” reports. Marksville is the only one of the nine parish municipalities that meets that criteria. The online lists are identical, with Marksville at No. 4. The city was 7th on the list in 2019, which was for the 2017 statistics.

Some argue the figures are inaccurate and/or incomplete. Also, because all municipalities are not included, they say the ranking is unfair. “We’ve been through this before,” MPD Police Chief Elster Smith said. “It is not a true description of Marksville. I believe this city is safe compared to other cities our size.”

UNFAIR TO COMPARE

Smith said it is unfair to compare cities of different sizes because the method used to make the comparison skews the figures “so that the crime that does occur here shows to be more when compared to the bigger cities.”

Smith said the city sends a monthly report to the FBI on violent crime and property crime that the FBI then uses in its annual Uniform Crime Report, which tracks the crime rates throughout the nation.

“When we write a report, it goes into the system and is reported to the FBI,” Smith said. “Not all municipalities file a monthly report with the FBI, but we do.”

This particular crime rate study looks only at four “violent” offenses and three “property” crimes. The complete FBI report includes information on over 20 other offenses in separate analytical tables.

Smith’s position is also supported by the report’s author, the FBI.

In its news release on the recent report, the FBI specifically said the annual statistics should not be used to rank and compare cities and counties/parishes.

“These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, tribal area or region,” the FBI said. “Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents.”

Despite that advice, reports such as the “10 Most Dangerous Cities in Your State” are part of the annual news release landscape. People love lists and they love to compare, no matter how misleading the reports can be.

DETERMINING CRIME RATE

Nobody argues that there are more crimes in larger cities. Comparisons such as that done by Only In Your State and Roadsnacks convert the number of crimes into a “crime rate” of crimes per 100,000 population.

The websites used the 2018 FBI report, the most recent year with final figures available when the reports were prepared. They used current population estimates and not the
outdated “official” 2010 Census figures.

Under the per-100,000 method, a crime would be counted as two crimes in a city of 50,000, one in a city of 100,000, 1/2 in a city of 200,000, etc.

A crime in a city of 5,000 -- the lowest population to be a city -- would count as 20 crimes in determining the per-100,000 crime rate.

Marksville is the smallest city on the list with an estimated population of 5,450. It had a violent crime rate of 1,944 per 100,000 (2nd highest) and a property crime rate of 7,247/100,000 (7th highest).

To get a per-100,000 rate, each crime in Marksville was counted as 18.3 crimes. The FBI reports Marksville had 106 violent crimes and 395 property crimes in 2018.

Violent crimes are murder/manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.Property crimes are burglary, theft and vehicle theft.

The FBI report showed that 102 of Marksville’s violent crimes were aggravated assaults and the other four were robberies. Attempted murder/manslaughter would be considered aggravated assaults in this report since it involves injury with a weapon but not the loss of a human life.

The report showed no murder/manslaughter or rapes in Marksville in 2018.

Although news reports for 2018 were not extensively researched, there were two highly publicized shooting deaths at a Marksville nightclub in October 2018 that should have been noted in the report and weren’t.

That fact calls into question the accuracy and completeness of the Marksville numbers and, possibly, to conclude Marksville may be “more dangerous” than even Roadsnacks says it is.

Those numbers also point out that a robbery counts as much as a murder in the “violent crime” rate compiled by the online rankings.

A review of the FBI report online found seven of the other eight Avoyelles municipalities were not listed.

Moreauville was on the list but had no violent or property crimes reported.

RURAL ARRESTS

The Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s Office report for the unincorporated areas of the parish showed 197 violent crimes and 395 property crimes. That would be a crime rate of approximately 800 for violent crimes and almost 1,600 for property crimes.

The APSO records showed one murder, seven rapes, no robberies and 189 aggravated assaults.

To gain statistical perspective, the state’s violent crime rate is 537/100,000 and the national rate is 369/100,000.

If you believe the “top 10” list, Marksville is three times more dangerous than the state overall and over five times more dangerous than the nation overall.

Based on the FBI’s news release, it could be that other municipalities either chose not to submit monthly reports or those agencies were not included for participation in the UCR Program.

The FBI said 18,586 federal, state, county, city, university/college and tribal agencies in the nation “are eligible to participate in the UCR Program. Of that number, 16,659 agencies submitted data in 2018.”

It could be the “real most dangerous” cities are among those not submitting their crime data.

CRIME ‘HOT SPOTS’

If crime is considered a “disease,” then there are three major “hot spots” in the state, according to the “Most Dangerous” ranking.

Marksville is the epicenter of one that includes Opelousas 54 miles to the south and Alexandria 34 miles to the north. Leesville and Crowley are “outliers” in this
zone, with Leesville 84 miles to the west and Crowley 96 driving miles to the south.

Due to a more direct route, Crowley is only 82 miles from Alexandria, even though it is 45 miles north of Marksville and Crowley is south of here.

A second “crime zone” is in the northeast, with Monroe, West Monroe and Bastrop.

The Baton Rouge area includes Hammond and Walker, which are less than 30 miles apart.

Every year when this list come out and Marksville is on it, there are those who say, “Marksville isn’t more dangerous than New Orleans.”

In 2018, according to the FBI UCR table for violent crimes, there were 147 murders in New Orleans, 79 in Baton Rouge and 49 in Shreveport.

Those three cities accounted for most of the murders in the state.

Now, that’s dangerous.