Crime Watch II

Yesterday's Claremont Courier featured a front page article about new Police Chief Paul Cooper. We've written here before about Cooper's being the candidate of the Claremont 400, Helaine Goldwater in particular. We've also argued that Cooper, who joined the Claremont PD in 1985, about three years before former City Manager Glenn Southard started, is very much in the Southardian management style: install yes men in middle and upper management; stifle dissenting opinions; use bonuses and performance evaluations to reward those loyal to you and to punish independent thinking.

As we stated two days ago, our objection to Cooper is that he doesn't really represent institutional change. Rather, he represents a step backward in terms of management culture, back to the Southard days. He's spent his time since being installed as interim chief in August, 2006, filling the positions beneath him with people loyal to him, entrenching himself in the position and discouraging more qualified candidates from applying. The fix was so obviously in that it would be a waste for a smart person to apply.

Speaking of the fix being in, a reader with inside information wrote in to say:

Rumor has it that the public review panel for the chief of police unanimously thought that Paul Cooper was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Why then, do you suppose, did City Manager Parker appoint him? What was the decision of the professional panel? Did the CM just hold his breath, wait for McHenry to become political dead meat and do what he planned on doing all along? Were the two review panels, public (each council member got to appoint 1 public person for the public panel) and professional, just a dog and pony show? Seems that way. There were about five or six formal letters to council members touting the merits of appointing Cooper, one of them from the owner of Bert and Rocky's Ice Cream Parlor, so was that what swayed him? Perhaps we will never know, but it would be interesting to find out how they all voted. Bet it is secret information, but in the end, it was the CM's decision all long.More pity Claremonters.

The reader also pointed out that the Tony Krickl's second article on the Police Department had the misleading headline of "CLAREMONT CRIME CONTINUES TO DECREASE." (The article is not available online.)

The police department released a comparison of 2005 and 2006 crime stats, claiming that crime had declined eight percent in 2006. Here is a table with the stats. Note that Cooper's department withheld the 2004 numbers:

As you can see, virtually the entire decrease came in one area: thefts. In the Krickl article, Cooper attributed the drop to the arrest of two very active burglars and to educating college students on keeping a better watch on their property.

The other crime numbers stayed essentially the same. If you removed the theft numbers, the totals for all other crimes were 444 in 2005 and 452 in 2006.

The problem with the numbers is that the Claremont PD and Cooper are doing exactly what Pomona College President David Oxtoby complained of when he wrote that Forbes.com was most likely going to list Pomona College among the top five, and possibly the number one, among colleges for crime per capita.

Oxtoby said that Forbes looked at only one year, 2005, which he said was anomalous for crime. Oxtoby listed the following numbers for reported theft incidents on campus:

The 2005 spike was not the norm and, according to Oxtoby, was the result of "some juveniles" who were apparently stealing from dorm rooms. In 2006, the numbers reverted to what one might normally expect. So, in Oxtoby's mind, pointing to only the 2005 numbers and not looking at how they fit into the bigger picture, Forbes is skewing their analysis of Pomona College's crime problem.

Using the Cooper Method, Pomona College's theft rate decreased by 54 percent from 2005 to 2006. Or it increased by 73 percent from 2004 to 2005. It all depends of what numbers you play with.

And that is exactly what Paul Cooper is guilty of. Glenn Southard, of course, did this type of thing constantly, this numbers game. Don't say we didn't warn you.