Fact check: Only Warren homicides have dropped, not all violent crime

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

In a recent interview with The Vindicator and at a public speaking engagement, Warren Mayor Doug Franklin, a Democrat running for re-election on the Nov. 3 ballot, claimed that violent crime in Warren has dropped by 80 percent since he became mayor in 2012.

But based on statistics compiled by the Warren Police Department and reported to the federal government through its National Incident-Based Reporting System, violent crime in Warren increased 3 percent between 2011 – just before Franklin became mayor – and the end of 2014, which is the most-recent full year for which statistics are available.

At the interview, when asked about the methodology used to arrive at his 80 percent figure, he referred the question to his safety-service director, Enzo Cantalamessa.

Within a few days, Cantalamessa provided an explanation: He had been using only murder as his definition of violent crime, and he was using the number of murders in 2015 as the end point of the analysis, not the most-recent complete year.

A look at those numbers indicates that Warren had nine murders in 2011, five in 2012, nine in 2013, eight in 2014 and one so far in 2015. So in terms of murder, the number had dropped by 11 percent between 2011 and 2014 and 89 percent between 2011 and 2015, assuming there will be no more murders during the last 10 weeks of this year.

According to the FBI, however, four categories of offenses are used to indicate violent crime: murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

The FBI defines robbery as the taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force or threat of force or violence and/or by putting the victim in fear. It defines aggravated assault as an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury, usually with a weapon.

In Warren in 2011, there were nine homicides, 45 rapes, 85 robberies and 682 aggravated assaults for a total of 821, according to the Warren Police statistics reported to the federal government. In 2014, there were eight murders, 45 rapes, 153 robberies and 639 aggravated assaults for a total of 845.

The FBI publishes a separate analysis of violent crime each year under the title Uniform Crime Reports that lists those same four categories of crime and assigns a total of violent crime for each year. It indicated that Warren’s violent crime number was 258 in 2011 and 181 in 2014, a drop of 30 percent. Youngstown’s violent crime numbers, for comparison, were 619 in 2011 and 424 in 2014, a drop of 31.5 percent.

When asked whether Franklin’s assertion that “We’ve been able to reduce violent crime by 80 percent in the City of Warren” is misleading, Cantalamessa said, “The most violent of crime is down by 80 percent.”

Franklin was in the building at the time and agreed with Cantalamessa, saying, “The most-violent of crimes are down” and added that the reduction in homicides is “significant.”

When asked whether the statement he has been making that “We’ve been able to reduce violent crime by 80 percent” is misleading, Franklin conceded, “I’d be more specific.”

His opponent is independent Dennis Blank.