Accountability for South Bend’s Violent Crime [Updated]
[Update: On July 18th, 2019 I received via public records request the monthly crime reports submitted by South Bend Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski to the Board of Public Safety (BPS) and the Mayor. Interestingly, the year to date crime totals reported to the BPS and the Mayor in these documents do not match those of the South Bend Police Department Transparency Hub, which reports crime data to the public. In fact, what the SBPD has been reporting to the public since February 2019 through June 2019 has been inaccurate.
By comparing monthly reports, it appears that the City of South Bend entered the wrong crime data for February 2019. Category totals for that month come from the Year To Date total and not February 2019’s total. For example, the SBPD Transparency Hub lists 110 Aggravated Assaults in Feb 2019, even though the monthly total submitted to the BPS was 39. This accounts for the difference of 71 incidents between the SBPD Transparency Hub Jan-June 2019 total of 518 Aggravated Assaults and that of the BPS June 2019 Year To Date total, which is 447. I have edited this column to account for the City of South Bend’s data errors.]
South Bend is on pace for roughly 1300 violent crimes in 2019. Its highest single year total of the last 25 years was 1241 violent crimes. When will this be discussed by city leaders? When will it be reported to citizens? Why might this be happening?
This morning a South Bend teen was shot in the back. This wounded youth joins an increasingly grisly list in a year that is increasing our rate of violent activity. Consider that January through June in 2017 recorded 249 Aggravated Assaults. 2018 in that same period registered 312. January through June of 2019 recorded 447. May and June were especially violent, with 197 Aggravated Assaults in these two months alone.
South Bend is on pace to break the 25 year-old high mark of 11.5 violent crimes per 1,000 residents. Our current trajectory in 2019 is 12.7 violent crimes per 1,000 residents.
What are the responses by South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski, Democratic Nominee for Mayor James Mueller, and the South Bend Tribune? City of South Bend leadership and local media have yet to communicate the degree of South Bend’s violent crime surge. This pattern has been documented in prior columns, regarding vague or inaccurate public statements made in 2019 about this year’s violence and vague and inaccurate public statements regarding prior years’ violent crime. And the South Bend Police Department, via its Transparency Hub, has reported incorrect crime data to the public from the end of February 2019 into July 2019.
The Tribune has published few articles regarding violent crime and none in recent months on South Bend’s violent crime surge. From May 1 2019 until July 13 2019, a search for the phrase “violent crime” yielded just three articles, two of which are about crime elsewhere, and one about a local shooting.
The Tribune issued an op-ed in March 2019 challenging the city’s national reputation as a violent city, even after 2018 notched South Bend’s highest violent crime rate in decades. Mayor Buttigieg indicated in his March 2019 State of the City that violent crime was down.
The eventual Democratic Nominee for Mayor, James Mueller, stated in April 2019, right before South Bend voters went to the polls, that violent crime had declined. So did South Bend City Council President Tim Scott.
The national media has not accounted for May and June’s surge in violence, with this July 9, 2019 article omitting it, under-projecting South Bend’s violent crime as a result.
As the city and the country are uniformed about South Bend’s violent crime, absent too are discussions about why South Bend’s violent crime rockets, while the nation’s violent crime rate has decreased substantially in recent decades. What are some factors fueling our violent crime?
South Bend has some of the highest rates of lead-poisoned youth in the nation. A 2018 study in the journal Criminology focused on Chicago found “a plausibly causal effect of childhood lead exposure on adolescent delinquent behavior.” Another 2018 study in Environmental Health finds “early life lead exposure is associated with aggressive behaviours, delinquency and related crimes.” Yet the 2016 discovery of South Bend’s high rates of lead poisoning and the ineffectiveness of local leaders in addressing our lead crisis has not been discussed, with few exceptions in local or national media, as an important factor in our surging violent crime.
Economic opportunities have been lacking for many in our community, a condition that has received poor focus. Economic inequality has been exacerbated by the de facto segregation of City of South Bend purchasing from local and regional Minority- and Women-owned businesses. As ABC 57 reporter Taurean Small discovered, less than 2% of the City of South Bend’s $101 million dollars spent in 2017 went to Minority and Women Owned Business combined. Drilling down further, South Bend spent just $707.88 on African American owned business in that year. The minutes of the Board of Minority and Women Business Enterprise are studded with complaints about problems with the city Diversity Utilization Plan, the city’s website for procurement, and a proposal to reduce hours for city staff working on diversity. And then this Board with mayoral appointees did not meet for three-and-a-half years.
The City of South Bend under Mayor Buttigieg resisted efforts to integrate better oversight and more diversity in leadership regarding public safety. In 2016, for example, South Bend Councilwoman Regina Williams-Preston repeatedly asked for meetings with Mayor Buttigieg about a citizens’ review board, funding for community-based policing efforts, and creation of a task force on integrating the community in public safety initiatives. The Mayor rejected the approaches of this elected official, with a response that he was “too busy” and that those planning the meeting had to “prove their good faith”. With a Public Safety Board of all-mayoral and all-male appointees, South Bend’s Police diversity fell in terms of African American officers and, following a high-profile case against Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski for unlawful retaliation, a female officer.
Local law enforcement also did not properly investigate violent crimes against women. In 2017 it was discovered that hundreds of untested “rape kits” were present in Saint Joseph County, of which the South Bend Police Department held 268. Further investigation found that the majority of kits kept from testing for “invalid reasons” occurred from 2012–2017. These discoveries provoked “shock and outrage” among local advocates for women victimized by violence, and yet I have been unable to find a discussion of the Mayor or the South Bend Board of Public Safety about discipline or reforms related to this failure, even as South Bend Police stored hundreds of these kits and SBPD officers serve in the Special Victims Unit that investigates these violent crimes.
Assessing the causes of violent crime is a complex undertaking, involving analysis of economics, education, law enforcement, government, and more. The factors briefly described here are just a beginning. But the first step is communication of the scope of our violent crime, so that the community can know it and respond.
