Because Bowling Green is a rather small town, the crime rate isn’t as high as it might be in New York City. Certain years however, some crimes show a 100 or even 300 percent increase in the amount of occurrences, but these statistics might not be as drastic as one might think.
“Some people call us up and ask why there has been such a large increase in the percentages of certain crimes,” said Lt. Ken Fortney of the Bowling Green Police Division. “What people don’t realize is that we don’t often have a lot of crime in Bowling Green, and take for instance this year we had a murder. We didn’t have a murder last year so the percentage increase reads that our murder rate increased 100 percent.”
In 2003, Bowling Green had a 100 percent increase in illegal gambling. If that is the only statistic a person might see, then they might think the city of Bowling Green as a whole has a huge gambling problem.
What people don’t see is that in 2003 the police department had one call for service for gambling and in 2002 they had zero, so mathematically there was a 100 percent increase, but according to Lt. Brad Biller, these numbers are simply not correctly represented.
“Say we had one total murder this year and four next year, that’s a 400 percent increase,” Lt. Biller of the Bowling Green Police Division said. “People just see the percent and say, ‘oh my lord that’s a bunch of people getting killed in Bowling Green.’ When we put that data out there it’s very important for us to make people recognize that you have to look at these increases for the numbers that they really are.”
Some statistics are easier to look at and find the trends that have increased or decreased such as liquor laws and disorderly conduct because the numbers of calls for service are higher.
In October, November and December of 2002 there were 505 total criminal arrests and 1338 total traffic violations. In 2003 of the same months there were 452 total criminal arrests and 1271 making a slight decrease in the percentage of crimes happening.
“The larger the numbers get, the easier it is to find a significant trend,” Lt. Fortney said.
