This story began when the Inquirer screwed up crime statistics reporting.
In July, the Inquirer followed the annual release of the Pennsylvania State Police UCR report with a front page story trumpeting that overall crime fell 17 percent in Delaware County, the Philadelphia area's most urban county. But what the Inquirer missed was that Delaware County looked so good because it's second-most crime ridden town had been completely omitted from the state's crime report.
Upper Darby Township was left out of the annual report, state officials told us, because police there had simply failed to report on a timely, monthly basis. The second-day, front page story was a feature-length correction that began something like "Delaware County residents, put down the champagne." Meanwhile, back in our suburban headquarters, reporters and editors broke out the annual crime reports to better our understanding of crime statistics.
Getting a handle on the stats
In his spare time, an editor began inputting two years of crime statistics into Excel to try to get some perspective. That effort grew to a five-year analysis of crime in 255 suburbs in seven suburban counties surrounding Philadelphia.
All the data was entered by hand from printed state reports into Excel. Most "Part One" or serious crimes were included: murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and car theft. Our goals were first to save face with a sound analysis of suburban crime, and secondly to build a permanent five-year database that reporters could use to write breaking news about crime in its true historic context.
We learned early that crime statistics are rife with error and tricky to interpret. Larceny in one town may mean shoplifting at a major mall. In another, larceny could mean a rash of thefts from unlocked cars. As far as errors went, many crimes appearing in the state's report seemed patently wrong. For example, one suburb showed 92 arsons in one year. Impossible. The state police told us that must have been a data entry error. In addition, about half of our 255 towns had submitted only nine months of reports, and the state police ended up estimating missing months. We printed out all the data and scanned for what seemed like anomalies. Reluctantly, staff writer Larry King and I concluded we would have to conduct phone interviews with local police departments to be sure we got the numbers right. That took about three weeks. In the end, we interviewed 100 police chiefs to correct the data.
I ran into another snag when Jennifer LaFleur was visiting the Inquirer from the San Jose Mercury News. Looking at our data, LaFleur, who is head of computer-assisted reporting in San Jose, correctly pointed out that state police population numbers did not seem to reflect suburban growth over the five year period. When state police numbers were compared to U.S. Census estimates, it turned out LaFleur was right. The state police population estimates were thrown out, and I substituted U.S. Census estimates. Where none were available for certain years, like 1993 and 1995, I calculated the compound average growth rate of each town's population for an estimate.
Getting the story
The intensive effort to correct the crime data was worthwhile because we also learned about trends in detail along the way. For example, when it was time to do spot reporting to highlight instances of crime, we were able to pinpoint exactly the communities and chiefs we wanted to focus on because of the prior interviewing and data analysis. This cut down a lot on time spent searching out anecdotal trends. Correspondent interns helped out by spot-reporting in towns on their beats.
The result was an 80-inch story which focused on property crimes as the major offenses of substance in the suburbs. We mapped the average, five-year property crimes of burglary, larceny and car theft throughout the region to show which suburbs were hit hardest. Neill Borowski, the Inquirer's director of computer-assisted reporting, mapped a five-year-average crime rate throughout the suburbs for a large, inside regional map. In addition to the front page story, each of the seven county 'Neighbors' sections ran that day with a unique crime story about trends in that area. Inside each 'Neighbors' section, readers were also provided with extensive graphics listing car theft, burglary and larceny rates in their towns and neighboring suburbs for the last five years. All of the data was posted to Philly Online, the Inquirer's web site.
I hope the story debunked widespread paranoia about violent crime. We learned that old established suburbs near Philadelphia's border were often not the most vulnerable to theft because of tight neighborhoods where neighbors look out for each other, and crammed roads that make poor escape routes for thieves.
The story also showed that new suburbs have lost the exclusive, protected aspect they once had, because malls and new highways lure thieves to affluent areas.
However, suburban dwellers stubbornly cling to the notion they don't have to lock up. Police chiefs know otherwise, and said theft could be cut way down if only homeowners would lock their belongings.
Reader response was fantastic. In the week after the story was published and the historical data put on-line, a reporter in our Delaware County bureau looked up one town's rape record to report on a string of rapes in that town.
The long term usefulness of the data made the project more rewarding than a one-day story. I hope reporters continue to use the on-line database in this way. I have also received many queries requesting the data from local planning boards and agencies such as the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.
When the Pennsylvania State Police release their 1997 annual crime report, the Inquirer will be ready. Never again, hopefully, will state police crime statistics be reported out of context here.
The crime report seems to have changed how editors approach data stories in the Philadelphia suburban bureaus. A year ago, it was difficult to interest suburban editors in data analysis stories. They were rightly anxious to fill the book and get stories in by deadline. However, it seems editors are finding that the projects can work to their advantage. Always eager to fill large Neighbors sections, zone editors have embraced the idea of listing large charts of data specific to small towns, so readers can compare communities. When the Census recently released population data showing shifts between 1990 and 1996, I wrote a story about the decline in population in Philadelphia and its older, affluent suburbs. Curious to see if there was indeed an "inner ring" of stagnant suburbs around the city, I asked Neill Borowski to map the changes using GIS software. The next day, suburban editors were so wowed by the color maps they commissioned a population treatment in the crime model. That is, big regional map and story accompanied by zoned sections with specific charts and stories. Using data this way has also created some of the most substantial cooperation between our six, far-flung suburban bureaus that has ever existed at the Inquirer. For each data project, editors and reporters in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey suburbs meet and discuss the trends and plot coverage strategies. The result is it enables us to take a broad regional look, and zero in on local angles using the zoned sections - exactly the mandate of suburban editors. I am pleased they view computer-assisted reporting as a way to get there.
Jere Downs can be reached at (610) 832-8328, or send e-mail to Jdowns@Philly.Infi.Net