Crime rates – especially violent crime – have become an issue in this year’s Wichita mayoral race.
But analyzing crime rates and the statistics associated with them isn’t a black and white issue.
“There are 18,000 different law enforcement agencies in the country, and there is no set standard for what these incidents are, or how they're supposed to be counted,” said Morgan Steele, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Fort Hays State University.
While the Wichita Police Department keeps its own crime statistics information, reporting those numbers up the chain to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation can create discrepancies, which can create misleading statements from candidates to voters.
Wichita Police reports their raw data to the KBI, but even through that first step, the numbers don’t align.
For the KBI’s latest crime report in 2022, the bureau reports 3,102 aggravated assaults in Wichita. But data provided by Wichita Police to KMUW shows 2,713 occurred that year – and the FBI reports 2,241.
The discrepancy could be because of how those agencies count those cases. The KBI report states that the bureau counts offenses like aggravated assaults by number of victims, but according to The Wichita Eagle earlier this year, Wichita Police counts by incident.
“We reviewed multiple different municipalities in the I-35 corridor and found that there was not a single agency who had identical data to the FBI report,” Lt. Aaron Moses with the Wichita Police Department said in an email to KMUW.
Those discrepancies led to confusion early in the mayoral race, The Eagle reported. Using faulty data from the FBI Crime Index, current Mayor Brandon Whipple claimed that violent crime was halved during his term.
His campaign has since walked back that statement, and Wichita Police have also taken down violent crime stats from their website because “it was not analyzed using [National Incident-Based Reporting System/Uniform Crime Reporting] definitions.”
“The policymakers – meaning … both law enforcement professionals but also city leadership, politicians – they should know what they're talking about,” said Steele, the Fort Hays State professor, “and the public should trust them to know what they're doing.”
Recent mailers from mayoral candidate Lily Wu’s campaign also misinterprets crime data.
The mailers say that violent crime in Wichita is three times the national average. But when Wu’s campaign provided its data to back up that statement, it compared the city and national rates for violent crime per 1,000 people – which Steele said is a bad comparison to make.
“I live in Hays, Kansas, which has, on a good day, 25,000 people in it,” he said. “We should not be compared to Wichita because Wichita is 10 times our size … we should be looking at, ‘How does Wichita stack up to other similar sized and similar situated cities in the U.S.?’ ”
Several recent high-profile incidents, including a night club shooting and other fatal incidents in the downtown area, have led to more discussion of crime during the election season. Regardless of how each campaign talks about the issue, data provided to KMUW by Wichita Police for violent crime from 2019 to 2023 suggests that violent crime offenses have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Steele said during times of economic instability, like inflation and higher rates of poverty, violent crime can occur more often.
“That's not something we can ask the police to do anything about because they can't control economics, they can't control recessions,” Steele said. “They're just having to deal with the aftermath at that point.”
A recently released report by the FBI also indicates that violent crime nationally – such as murder, aggravated assaults and rape – were down in 2022. However, robberies showed an estimated 1 percent increase.
The report used data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which the Wichita Police Department uses, and the Summary Reporting System (SRS).
The FBI is transitioning away from the Summary Reporting System because unlike NIBRS, it doesn’t take into account why incidents occurred, such as a homicide as a result of domestic violence.
Switching to the new system, though, has required police departments to report more data to the agency, resulting in fewer departments reporting to the FBI and leading to even more discrepancies for national data.
“The bigger agencies are more able to participate because they've got dedicated information technology people,” Steele said. “The smaller agencies are the ones that are struggling because that's a lot more work for them to fill out than just a 7-, 8-column spreadsheet every month.”
During election years, Steele said voters should question claims produced by campaigns and ask more of their elected officials.
“Instead of someone just saying, ‘Well, crime is up, we need to do something about it,’ ask them, ‘What do we need to do?’
“That's the role of leadership and law enforcement and political leadership and policy makers. They have to have a solution.”
