Violent crime down in Parsons, according to report
The Parsons Police Department says it has lowered its violent crime rate from 2018.
Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) Uniform Crime Report (UCR) statistics for 2019 have been released. in Kansas.UCR violent crimes include murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault/battery. Other UCR property crimes include burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
“This decrease is a direct result of the partnership that the citizens have with their police department and shows that ‘See It, Hear It, Report It’ does work,” says Parsons Police Sgt. Jason Ludwig.
The violent crime rate for Parsons dropped from 9.6 in 2018 to 7.6 in 2019. In 2019 Parsons had 73 total violent crimes.
“We are also releasing the Parsons 2019 Crime Clock,” Ludwig says.
He says the Crime Clock is released annually and is handed out at speaking engagements and other events.
“Putting the crime rate of the city into a timeline allows citizens to see the crime rate in a new perspective,” Ludwig states. “Knowing the police have a call load of 16,202 calls for service per year means that every 33 minutes officers are responding to an incident. That kind of information really opens up someone’s eyes. I know that even as I collected the statistics, I was shocked to see the results of the clock.”
Parsons Police Chief Robert Spinks says, “This is what we have expected as a department. We watched the numbers over the last year as the calls for service came in and knew that we were seeing a drop in our Violent Crime rating. But with any gain there comes a small sacrifice. Our property crime stats had a slight increase over 2018.”
“The Per Capita and total numbers of reported crime tell a different story. We may have a 48.2 crime rating per capita, but that only translates to 461 UCR crimes for the entire year. Considering that the City of Parsons is the 36th largest city in Kansas that number is considerably low,” said Sgt. Ludwig.
Aggravated Domestic Battery continues to drive the violent crime rate in Parsons up because of a 2017 law change. This law change made certain levels of domestic battery felonies that were previously misdemeanors.
“It is gratifying that our agency has been able to achieve a successful case clearance rate for crime that is twice the national average,” states Deputy Chief Dennis Dodd. “Some residents are quick to compare the City of Parsons to cities the size of Wichita. In comparison to the larger cities the only likeness is that they are the largest municipalities in their region.”
Parsons UCR data can be found at http://www.kansas.gov/kbi/stats/stats_crime2019.shtml
The 2020 census report put the City of Parsons population at 9,495. That is a 9.57% decrease in population since 2010 according to World Population Reviews website https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/parsons-ks-population .