The Southern Oregon town believes nationally-reported numbers are being blown out of proportion.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Medford was recently featured on USA Today’s list of cities with the most growth in violent crime – but the statistics used to determine the ranking were flawed, the city’s chief of police says.
Police Chief Tim George was quoted in an OregonLive.com story saying “things are not always as they appear.”
For example, he said, 125 simple assaults were misclassified in 2013 as aggravated assaults and included incidents in which relatively harmless objects such as shoes or water bottles were thrown at someone. The agency did the same with threats where the person wasn’t actually able to follow through on them.
That could throw the analysis by 24/7 Wall St. — which ranked Medford behind only Bismarck, North Dakota, for the collective growth of murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults from 2009 to 2013 — on its side. Longview, population 37,000, didn’t fare much better with its No. 4 ranking. The financial news website relied on data that should never have been reported to the FBI, George said. That includes the 125 simple assaults, which accounted for 28 percent of the violent crimes Medford police reported in 2013.
Medford has been fighting a high crime reputation for years. A pair of businessmen are trying to help change the city’s image by revitalizing downtown. Read that Oregon Business feature story here.
