Allegations of fudging the crime numbers in Washington, D.C., are rekindling old memories.
Current, younger residents of the crime-ridden Greater Johnstown Area might be surprised to hear that 50 to 60 years ago, Johnstown’s low crime rate was an annual point of pride.
Like clockwork, the feds would crunch crime numbers and Johnstown would emerge as being one of the safer, if not the safest cities in the nation. The local newspaper, before it became the Woke Gazette, would report this as gospel and so it went, year after year.
I do recall, however, even back then some found the numbers to be a tad suspect. Members of the public, based on anecdotal evidence — either crimes they saw reported in the newspaper, TV stations or radio stations, or crimes that happened to people they knew, or were committed by people they knew – wondered aloud how the numbers could be so low and things so idyllic in our little valley.
Gradually, those low crime numbers went the way of 28-cent-a-gallon gasoline. Fast-forward to today and few would proclaim this area to be a model city with an extremely low crime rate.
During my early days working at the Johnstown newspaper, I did a brief stint as the night police beat reporter. That meant monitoring the police scanner religiously, and each shift making three separate walks to the Public Safety Building along nearby Washington Street. The first was to check in on fire calls, the second, to go upstairs and get the police reports and, about 10:30 or so each night, there was a trip for catching up with detectives after they’d completed their night shift.
There was a police reporter who did this during daylight hours, too.
On one nightly detective visit, I was chatting with a detective who happened to be a neighbor. His partner decided he would use our ride together down the elevator to give me a lecture.
Simply put, this detective said when I, or a fellow staffer, came over and was told there was nothing to report, we should race back to our typewriters (yes, we used manual typewriters in those days) and hammer out something to the effect: “No crime was committed in the city tonight. Detectives and police officers were on the job, keeping all safe.”
My response, not word for word, but the general idea: “That could be the case. Also, it could be the case that the town was filled with crime and the police/detectives were too disinterested or inept to do anything about it.”
The detective did not take this well. Things got very tense very quickly.
A day or two later, my detective neighbor told me I’d really hit a nerve. Just before I told the other detective this bit about incompetence, that guy had botched a burglary investigation by storming in and handling evidence, leaving his fingerprints on many pertinent objects, such as doors, windows and various household items.
Beyond this specific incident, I also had been told on more than one occasion before joining the newspaper about suspicions the Johnstown Police were under-reporting crime.
That is exactly what some of the D.C. allegations charge, ranging from downgrading felonies to misdemeanors, to just igoring crimes in general. No paperwork, no bad data for the number crunchers.
Although our Johnstown Police force has been expanded in recent years and things are safer than at the nadir, there was a memorable night maybe 15 years ago that my wife, listening to the police scanner, heard a touching 911 call. A woman in Moxham was upstairs and an intruder had broken into her home downstairs.
The woman called 911 and the call went out to the police. The problem was our fair city had exactly one policeman working the streets that night and he was on a call in the West End which, for the geographically challenged, is the opposite side of our town.
The advice to the woman was to barricade herself in the room, get a weapon of opportunity such as perhaps a knife, and the police officer would get around to the Moxham call after he was done in the West End.
We never did hear how that turned out.
This, I told my wife at the time, is I why I own guns, have a carry permit, and target shoot often enough that I probably could put down a home invader by the time my gun’s magazine came up empty.
To sum up, I would not be shocked if crime numbers in Washington, D.C., have been massaged lower, or currently are being so manipulated. We thought that about Johnstown once upon a time.
If President Trump tomorrow wanted to send the National Guard into Johnstown, or my neighborhood for that matter, to reduce crime, I’d be all for it.
And, if you are repulsed by the Democrats’ apparent preference for lawlessness on the streets and want to guarantee that never again beomes governmental policy, be sure you make good voting decisions in each and every upcoming election.
Sam Ross Jr's site 