The bad news is that the number of rape cases on Kaua‘i was up last year, to 29 compared to 23 in 2002, a jump of 26 percent. The good news is that Kaua‘i Police Department officers cleared 39 percent
The bad news is that the number of rape cases on Kaua‘i was up last year, to 29 compared to 23 in 2002, a jump of 26 percent.
The good news is that Kaua‘i Police Department officers cleared 39 percent of 2003’s rapes, compared to 30 percent the year before, according to a department spokesperson and annual crime statistics released recently.
Better news may be that there were no murders reported on the island last year, compared to one in 2002.
How the statistics are interpreted vary from person to person, even within the KPD, and Lt. Miles Tanabe said analysis of trends last year and in 2002 might reveal no trends at all.
“Whenever you look at the (police) statistics for Kaua‘i, a fluctuation of five is a major jump either way,” he said.
“The reality is that the statistics don’t give a true indication” of crime on Kaua‘i, said Tanabe.
Tanabe said members of the public should see how they feel when judging the crime statistics. “They should be more or less concentrating on the quality of life overall and make their own assessment.”
While cases of rape, robbery, and assault reported to police were up in 2003 compared to 2002, the rate of cases solved by police was up as well.
Overall felony, or Part I, crime reports were almost exactly the same.
Robberies were up three cases, from 17 in 2002 to 20 last year, a rise of 17.6 percent. There were 159 motor-vehicle thefts, compared to 125 in 2002, the largest percentage jump recorded in the crime statistics, at 27.2 percent.
Assaults and larcenies rose about a percentage point each, while burglaries dropped over 9 percent from 726 in 2002 to 660 last year.
Robberies were cleared at a 70-percent rate last year, compared to just 40 percent in 2002.
But motor – vehicle – theft reports, while jumping 27 percent or 34 cases, were cleared only 30.4 percent of the time last year, compared to 34 percent in 2002.
Overall, there were actually two fewer Part-I crimes reported in 2003 compared to 2002, or 3,043 reports, compared to 3,045 in 2002.
And the percentage of those crimes cleared was up a bit, from 15.8 percent in 2002 to 16.1 percent last year.
With the limited size of Kaua‘i’s population, Tanabe said, statistics can be skewed by one person.
For example, he said, if one person writes 15 bad checks around the island, there will be 15 different reports of forgery. It is possible that those 15 forgeries could be more than any one month’s total combined, and it will look like a huge jump compared to another month.
For an island like Kaua‘i and a department like KPD, most trends are noticed more by officers and their supervisors than the general public, he indicated.
As crimes come in and are reported to police, the information is passed through the chain of command and to other officers on the street. Eventually, all crimes end up being examined by officers in the Investigative Services Bureau (ISB), he continued.
The lieutenants in that department see all the cases, island-wide, and can spot crime trends as they pop up, Tanabe said.
“Lieutenants in the ISB pick up on trends and utilize their detectives (and other assets) as much as possible,” said Tanabe.
Staff Writer Tom Finnegan may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or tfinnegan@pulitzer.net.
