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Flogging Stats To Spin Tales Of Doomsday

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 12, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - Figures lie and liars figure, goes the saying. It was ever thus, since the invention of the statistic. Luckily, that history-shaping development almost certainly sparked the skepticism gene to life, energizing our hubris detector.

This autumn in particular, as two of the most unlikely characters ever to top the major parties' tickets dance around their inadequacies against the backdrop of an economic meltdown neither is qualified to address, our poppycock-o-meters are revved deep into redline territory.

Now, as if we didn't have enough to sort through, along comes Kim Bogart with a collection of statistics that he's wielding like a sock full of nickels to work over Bob White, the fellow whose job he's after. Says Bogart, "The facts speak for themselves." Except when they don't.

Bogart, the Democratic aspirant for Pasco County sheriff, says the Republican incumbent has made a muck of things, and, at Thursday night's candidates' showdown at Pasco-Hernando Community College, he recited the statistics to prove it. By the time he finished, it was clear to half the auditorium that Armageddon was at hand ... and to the other half that they'd been wise to wear their waders.

All Bad News, All The Time

"Folks are concerned," Bogart says. "There is alarm." After all, he says, in the first eight months of 2008, robberies and home invasions spiked - up 26 percent - a clear symptom of increases in organized (gang-related) activity and crime run amok.

"In the here and now, violent crime is up 28 percent," Bogart continues, adding, "This not something I am imagining, that I'm making up just for tonight." These are numbers straight from the sheriff's office, an internal commanders' report leaked to his campaign. In it, murders are up 25 percent, overall crime 9 percent.

One wonders at Bogart's failure to cite other doomsday percentages. Purse snatching, up 50 percent. Thefts of motorcycles, up 18 percent. And the apparent deal-cincher: Robberies from coin-operated machines, up 375 percent. To the ramparts, men!

Inside The Numbers

Well. Before we all start camping out at the early voting polling places, let's have a look at what dispassionate analysts would call "the internals," or the raw numbers from which percentages emerge.

That's where we discover reported residential burglaries surged by only 13, from 50 to 63. Meaning? Within the sheriff's jurisdiction of more than 168,000 households, the likelihood of a Pasco resident experiencing a burglary at home was slightly above one-third of 1 percent.

The homicide stat equally misleads. That 25-percent leap shocks only when stripped of its context. There were a dozen reported murders through August 2007, 15 over the same period in 2008. This is not to downplay homicide's importance as an indicator of White's effectiveness. But, as long as we're thumping numbers, with 15 murders among 400,000 residents in his jurisdiction, the risk - one in 26,667 - scarcely argues for change.

As for the others, purse-snatching went from two to three, motorcycle thefts from 114 to 134 (while auto stealing dipped from 279 to 273), and coin-op theft from four to 19. In short, modest upticks in small numbers return percentages that are eye-popping but rarely instructive.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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