Second of two parts
Re “Griping Officers Should Be More Attentive to their Duties”
Sounding neither like a man on his way to the gallows nor one whose career publicly has been compared to a burnt bread that rhymes with “coast,” Police Chief Don Pedersen, as calmly as if he were ordering lunch, said that last week’s police union press release against him “contains some misinformation, for starters.
“Despite their claims, the crime rate, in terms and robberies and other areas I have looked at, has not escalated,” Mr. Pedersen said.
Further, he added, the union count was wrong about its central talking point. According to the chief, there were 11 robberies in Culver City last month, not 12.
“When you use statistics,” said Mr. Pedersen, “they can be interpreted in a number of different ways.
“The good news for the citizens of Culver City is that our numbers are so small, when you have a one or two increase, that is 10 or 20 percent. That makes it sound bad. But it is not necessarily a significant increase, which the union does not take into account.”
More ‘Inaccuracies’
Mr. Pedersen said he uncovered “a lot of misinformation” in the press release, “specifically when it comes to staffing levels. The release would lead a person to believe we have four 1-person cars on duty during the daytime.
“Here is information based on dayshift deployment on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Today you have seven officers plus one trainee, a sergeant, a lieutenant, a canine officer. Typically, we have three motor officers and a motor sergeant.
“We have a Crime Impact team, consisting of six detectives who can be used for incidents in the field when necessary. We also have a Crime Impact sergeant and the Detective Bureau personnel who, typically, would not be called out but could.
“That is a large deployment, significantly more than the four noted in the press release
The 89-member Police Officers Assn. is trying to dump the fifth-year chief on the grounds of “weak leadership.”
Last Thursday, the activist board issued a 2,255-word press release (culvercitypolice.com), pegging its case to a 9-city robbery survey for last month. Culver City showed 12 robberies, according to the union. Five cities had between 2 and 9, three had between13 and 20 — ergo, “serious” crime in Culver City is climbing, the union said.
In response, Mr. Pedersen said:
“Over the last 10 years, if you average the number of robberies, they are actually higher than in the first eight months of this year. The 10-year average was about 10 a month. This year it is 9.25.”
He called the data out from memory.
“I looked at robbery statistics from the year 2000 on,” Mr. Pedersen said. “We had a total of 124 robberies from 2000 to 2009. If I am doing my math right, that looks like 10.3 on average. In 2006, there was a pretty good spike. In 2008, for example, we had 103.
“Interesting to note that in 2001 (when Ted Cooke was Chief), we had 121, a pretty big number.
“In looking at the robbery statistics from January of this year through August, we averaged 9.25 per month.”
Returning to his thesis, Mr. Pedersen said, “I don’t think it is fair to say the chief has caused crime to go up. First of all, it hasn’t. When it does, it goes up and down very little.”
