Local crime data for 2023 shows uptick in violent and property crimes

ANALYSIS

BY LEN CABRERA

The first part of our booking log summary (found here) showed the demographic breakdown of the individuals booked into the Alachua County Jail during 2023. It also showed how many were booked multiple times or for multiple charges and gave a basic breakdown on types of charges, arrests for which we do not track individual charges (out-of-county, out-of-state, probation violations, failure to appear, etc.), and those for which we do (warrant and mittimus). It concluded with the law enforcement agency breakdown for mittimus bookings. In Part Two, we will look at the actual charges and other crime statistics for 2023 and compare them to 2022. 

Categorizing offenses

In the booking log produced by the Alachua County Jail each day, charges are listed in text boxes, often with inconsistent abbreviations and frequently lacking sufficient detail to correctly record the full extent of the crimes alleged. Rather than try to summarize the charges at the end of the year as we’ve done in the past, this year we classified charges into 37 broad categories each day. We grouped them into crimes against people, crimes against property, other crimes, and weapon offenses. 

The Florida Incident-Based Reporting System (FIBRS) also uses 37 categories, but ours are different and are based on the information we see in the booking logs. For example, the booking log usually only lists “petit theft” or “grand theft”  with a dollar amount. FIBRS lists nine different types of theft (pick pocketing, purse snatching, shoplifting, from motor vehicle, motor vehicle parts, from building, coin-operated machine, all other, and motor vehicle theft).

For weapon offenses, however, we capture more detailed information than FIBRS does. FIBRS only uses “weapons offenses,” but we were able to use arrest reports and court records to break out gun crimes from crimes with other weapons. We also separated several other types of weapon charges.

There were 85 other offenses found in the 2023 booking logs that we did not track for various reasons: they were not included in FIBRS, only occurred a few times, or were mostly administrative or public order crimes.

After updating the categories at the beginning of 2023, we went back through all of the 2022 booking logs to re-classify the offenses the same way as 2023 for comparison.

The table below shows the numbers of bookings and charges for the 37 categories we tracked. It only includes new, local charges (no out-of-county or out-of-state warrants) and omits charges associated with arrests for failure to appear (FTA), violation of probation (VOP), or an individual who has been sentenced because those charges are associated with the original crime (at the time of the original arrest), not a new crime. Here, as in Part One, “Bookings” are individuals booked into the Alachua County Jail, and “Charges” are the offenses allegedly committed by those individuals (see the notes below the table for additional information).

Changes from 2022 by category

Overall, crimes against people increased slightly, 1.5% by bookings and 3.1% by charges. Crimes against property were up dramatically: 24.7% by bookings and 202.4% by charges. Removing the two individuals who had 1,766 charges each (stolen credit cards) drops the total charges for crimes against property to 2,231, still a significant 17.1% higher than in 2022. Other crimes dropped slightly, 1.1% by bookings and 1.7% by charges. Weapon crimes were down significantly, but that belies the increase in gun violence reported in 2023.

People booked with gun charges were up 21.4% by bookings and 16.6% by charges. Despite these increases, overall weapon crimes were down, mainly because of a large drop in bookings and charges for carrying a concealed weapon with no permit, a result of a change to the law.

Based on bookings, non-domestic assaults and batteries were both up over 10% from 2022 to 2023, as were sexual assaults (up 17.8%). Violent crimes (homicide, sexual assault, robbery, and non-domestic battery) increased by 7.8% by bookings and 9.5% by charges.

Other crimes that increased significantly include other thefts (30.6%), criminal mischief (29.7%), trespassing (61.4%), sex offender registration violations (87%), and crimes while possessing a firearm (21.4%). These could be a result of better enforcement, not necessarily more crime. 

Data from Alachua County Sheriff’s Office

In order to see how the differences in jail bookings corresponded to differences in actual crime statistics, we looked at data from Alachua County Sheriff’s Office (ASO) and Gainesville Police Department (GPD).

ASO provides crime report data to City Protect, a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions. The system basically records all the incidents that are entered into ASO’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system. Last year, we could not compare 2022 figures to 2021 because ASO had just switched to the system. The table below shows the ASO incidents reported to City Protect that closely matched the categories we used to summarize the booking logs. 

Total incidents for ASO were down by nearly 6,500 incidents (2.8%) from 2022. Not all of the year-over-year changes match the changes in the booking logs, but theft, trespass, and criminal mischief were all up significantly, as they were in the booking logs. Curiously, two crime types were very different between the booking log and the CAD incidents:

• Robbery: down 12.1% in booking logs, up 10.4% in CAD incidents
• Sexual battery: up 17.8% in booking logs, down 21.9% in CAD incidents

It’s important to note that just because ASO has a CAD incident does not necessarily mean a crime was committed or a person was arrested.

In 2023, ASO dealt with 16,849 incidents responding to some type of disturbance. These include armed disturbances, civil disputes, domestic disturbances, physical fights, verbal disturbances, and trespassing (i.e., all S22 codes). That’s 6.8% more than 2022 and translated into 46 incidents per day in 2023.

Data from Florida Department of Law Enforcement

Another way to look at crime in Alachua County is using the Florida Incident-Based Reporting System (FIBRS) maintained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). Unfortunately, the 2023 data is only updated through September 2023. According to the FDLE website, the full data for 2023 will not be published until February 28.

The table below compares FIBRS data for GPD through the first three quarters of 2022 and 2023. The full dataset includes data from ASO, GPD, and the University of Florida Police Department, but the change in crime is over 100% for ASO, suggesting that the 2022 data for ASO is not complete. According to FIBRS, all three overarching categories (violent, property, and other) were up 3.7%, 5.9%, and 3.3%, respectively, from 2022 to 2023.

The types of charges listed in FIBRS do not match what is recorded in the booking log because the booking logs use terminology from Florida statutes. According to FDLE: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Program standardizes crime data based on nationally relevant offense definitions in lieu of using state-specific statute classifications.”

For example, in FIBRS, “aggravated assault” is defined as “an unlawful attack by one person upon another wherein the offender uses a dangerous weapon or displays it in a threatening manner or the victim suffers obvious severe or aggravated bodily injury, or where there was a risk for serious injury/intent to seriously injure.” This includes Florida charges for aggravated assault and aggravated battery. In FIBRS, “simple assault” is defined as “an unlawful physical attack by one person upon another where neither the offender displays a dangerous weapon, nor the victim suffers obvious severe or aggravated bodily injury involving apparent broken bones, loss of teeth, possible internal injury, severe laceration, or loss of consciousness.” According to Florida statutes this is simple battery. Florida charges for simple assault do not appear to be counted in FIBRS.

When we asked how to match assault and battery charges in the booking log with the charges in FIBRS, FDLE referred us to the Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) arrest reports. This data set includes 681,154 rows of data, with arrests reported by 52 counties. (There are 67 counties in Florida.) It is very dirty data with 11,743 blank arrest dates and others that are clearly errors (117 incidents before 2014, including one from 1958). The data for Alachua County only has 775 rows, and only two of those have valid dates, so it was not very useful.

Data from Gainesville Police Department

The figures from FIBRS do not match the Q3 data GPD presented to the Gainesville City Commission on November 2. The slide below, from GPD’s presentation, shows violent crimes up 7.3% and property crimes up 8.3%. 

We asked GPD to explain the difference between this slide and the data in FIBRS, and they said the numbers can change based on the date reported because reports can be reviewed and incidents can be reclassified from criminal to non-criminal or vice-versa. They also said that some reports on violent crimes use the number of victims while others use the number of incidents. That’s why, for example, the number of homicides in FIBRS is 11 (people) and GPD’s presentation to the City Commission shows 8 (incidents).

GPD presented statistics for the full year at the February 1st Gainesville City Commission Meeting. The slide below comes from GPD’s presentation and shows violent crimes up 4.37% and property crimes up 7.27% from 2022 to 2023.

While the full-year comparison to 2022 looks better than it did after the third quarter, note that homicides went from a 14% increase (1 more than 2022) to a 27% increase (3 more). GPD Assistant Chief Nelson Moya told the City Commission on February 1 that there were 14 homicide incidents and 16 homicide victims in 2023. Note also that the percentage increases for burglary and larceny got worse after the fourth quarter numbers were added.

Firearms incidents in Gainesville

GPD also provided us with updated figures on firearms incidents (shootings and confiscations) to compare with the information they gave us last year. Based on GPD’s numbers, shooting incidents declined by 23 (13.5%) from 2022 to 2023 after increasing by 45 (26.4%) from 2021 to 2022. Unfortunately, the number of people injured in shooting incidents increased by 13 (27.7%). 

The number of firearms seized by GPD also fell from 2022 to 2023. Despite the drop of 43 (10.1%) in seizures from 2022 to 2023, the 2023 figure is still 13.6% higher than it was in 2021. Note that over 80% of all firearms seized by GPD (not counting BB/pellet guns) in the last three years were handguns. “Assault-style” (i.e., AR and AK) firearms were barely 2% of weapons seized, and BB/pellet guns were seized more than twice as often as “assault-style” firearms.

Based on booking logs, ASO CAD reports, and GPD crime statistics, there were fewer shots fired in 2023 (despite more people booked for committing crimes with firearms).

Violent crimes, property crimes, trespassing, and criminal mischief with property damage all increased

Almost all of the data sources we used show similar trends to our compilation of charges from the booking logs, but one glaring exception was sexual assault. The booking logs showed a 31.2% increase in sexual assault bookings, but ASO’s CAD incidents show a 21.9% decrease and GPD’s FIBRS numbers show a 10.4% decrease. 

All our data sources showed that violent crimes and property crimes increased from 2022 to 2023, and there were also large increases in trespassing and criminal mischief with property damage.