Looking closer at I.F. Police Department’s 2015 crime statistics
The Idaho State Police releases their annual “Crime in Idaho” report for 2015. The report is a summary of crime statistics gathered from all over the state, but we broke down the meaning of the statistics for Idaho Falls (I.F. and Bonneville County ISP Crime Reports).
The Idaho Falls Police Department’s solve rate has gone up from last year. Their current rate is 46.3 percent, which is about the average rate for the state and the nation. But also, crimes have gone up.
“Overall, crimes went up this year, a little over five percent. The last two years crime went down five percent each year, and so we’re back to about the crime rate we had about two years ago in 2013,” said Idaho Falls Police Department Chief, Mark McBride.
Crimes are becoming more violent — all the way to the point where one responding officer isn’t enough anymore.
“We’re having an increase in crimes where we’ve had to send more than one officer. Our response rate for multiple-officer-calls is up to 28 percent of all of our total calls,” said McBride.
Rape cases in 2015 had a 21 percent solve rate, but this low number can be attributed to many different things.
“Sometimes it doesn’t meet the standard for an arrest or prosecution- is really what it amounts to. Most of the rapes we have in this community the offender is known, or the alleged offender is known. So it’s a matter of either recanting the story and not wanting to prosecute is a lot of what it is,” said McBride.
Drug offenses were the most solved crime in Idaho Falls at almost 93 percent.
“Most of those are based on traffic stops, and things like that, where they have the offender right there in the vehicle. The ones that are not cleared would be the ones where there are on-going cases: where they’ll be arrested at a later date or they’ve turned into an informant,” said McBride.
These annual crime stats reflect the police department’s activities, but it also reflects the community’s involvement- negative or positive.
