Violent Crime Silence in South Bend
2019 has seen an explosion in violent crime in South Bend. Yet South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and South Bend Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski have focused on just a few high-profile incidents of violence. I have yet to find an accurate characterization by either public official of the scope of the city’s violence. As of today, nearly all are unaware of the extent of South Bend’s recent violent crime wave.
Consider Aggravated Assaults. In the first five months of 2019, South Bend recorded 344 incidents of Aggravated Assault, as compared with 2017’s rate, which registered 200 incidents in the first five months of the year. To put this in perspective, in South Bend, only the most recent years of the last two decades exceeded 400 Aggravated Assaults.
Are the increases due to reporting changes? In 2018 the South Bend Police shifted to a new crime reporting system, called NIBRS, or the National Incident Based Reporting System. The huge jump in Aggravated Assaults is likely not due to this switch, as police agencies that transitioned to NIBRS registered less than a 1% change in Aggravated Assault tallies after doing so, according to the FBI. Considering a separate reporting change to the Aggravated Assault category by South Bend Police in 2016, the substantial growth in this category in following years indicates that the reporting change alone does not account for this tremendous increase.
And South Bend’s jump in Aggravated Assaults was recorded before June 2019. During this month, South Bend suffered a mass shooting, killing one and wounding 10, which caused a local hospital to go into lockdown after a crowd of 75-100 “upset and angry citizens” arrived; a different shooting that same night that caused the Saint Joseph County Sheriff to intervene because South Bend Police were “stretched thin”; a shooting that wounded two; a shooting that injured one; a drive by shooting that injured three; a fatal shooting; two unrelated shootings that injured four on the same night; another shooting; all part of a month which began with nearly a shooting each day for the first ten days. Among the statistics presented by the City of South Bend Police Dashboard, the record for shooting victims in a month before June 2019 was March 2018, with 14. As of July 6, 2019, the South Bend Police Department has yet to post the total of shooting victims for June 2019.
Here’s an accounting of Mayor Buttigieg and Police Chief Ruszkowski’s approach to the recent violent crime wave.
MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG
MATTHEWS: Is it a crime report you get?
BUTTIGIEG: I get instant reports as they happen and I get a monthly look at where the numbers are.
— from a town hall with MSNBC, June 3 2019
Despite receiving instant and monthly crime reports, Mayor Buttigieg made repeatedly inaccurate statements about South Bend’s huge rise in violent crime in 2016, 2017, and 2018. And during June and early July 2019, the Mayor missed opportunities to make a precise statement in the South Bend Tribune about the vast scope of South Bend’s violent crime wave.
For example, Mayor Buttigieg gave a press conference on policing July 2 at the end of South Bend’s violent June. Yet the South Bend Tribune report of that press conference provided no details about South Bend’s violent surge in that month, nor during 2019 as a whole. This press conference came after a gathering of local ministers earlier that day; some specifically lamented the increasing violence in the city, with the Mayor present.
On June 24th, 2019, the South Bend Tribune published an article entitled “Niles Man Dead, Up to 10 Others Injured In Shootings”. The article concluded with an unclear statement about violent crime trends by Mayor Buttigieg:
At a Sunday afternoon town hall to talk about last week’s officer-involved shooting, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg brought up the bar shooting. He said the city was on track to having fewer shootings this year than last, but he now doesn’t know if that is true anymore.
In a prior statement in May on violent crime, Mayor Buttigieg was inaccurate about local violent crime trends. In this May 15, 2019 interview, the Mayor stated that shootings have declined in recent years. Yet shootings and shooting victims increased in 2017, a year which saw shootings rise from 78 to 102, victims of criminally-assaulted shootings rise 25%, and fatal shootings climb 45%.
The Mayor’s commitment to data transparency has also faltered. As of July 5th, 2019, the City of South Bend’s Part I Crimes Database had yet to be updated with 2018's violent crime data. Its last update was listed as Nov. 9th, 2018. Thus it is not possible for citizens accessing this database to see 2018’s record-breaking crime data in relation to prior years.
Similarly, the South Bend Police Department’s interactive dashboard of crime statistics presents crime data with a visualization scheme that indicates crime trends over the last five years are visibly stable. It is difficult to use the dashboard to generate annual totals for violent crime categories. It is not possible to use the dashboard to compare crime data with years prior to 2015. And as of July 6, 2019, the police dashboard has yet to post 2019 statistics for shooting fatalities and criminally assaulted shooting victims.
A national crime data watchdog has also noticed that important violent crime data is inaccessible to the public. Here is the account of www.spotcrime.com, an advocate for best practices in crime data reporting, describing struggles over several years to get basic data from the City of South Bend. Reflecting on South Bend’s approach to crime reporting, the site states “ this is not an acceptable way of distributing data for a city of this size in 2019”.
POLICE CHIEF SCOTT RUSZKOWSKI
In South Bend, usually the new year begins with a South Bend Tribune interview with the Police Chief about the prior year’s crime. For example, in 2017, the Tribune had this story, entitled “South Bend Shootings Increased in 2017” published on Jan 6, 2018. It provided an interview with the Police Chief and an analysis of crime according to specific categories. About 2016’s crime, the Tribune published an article entitled “Chief Pleased With South Bend Police Work as Calls for Help Surged” on Jan 23, 2017, also with an interview and analysis. These articles were accompanied by a statistical breakdown of crime according to category.
2019, however, did not begin with such a story. There was no January 2019 published interview by the Tribune with Chief Ruszkowski about crime in 2018. And 2018 recorded the highest total of violent crime in decades.
There were other opportunities for Chief Ruszkowski to inform the public about violent crime’s surge upward. In April 2019 the South Bend Tribune published an article on Mayor Buttigieg’s legacy regarding crime. Chief Ruskowski did not return messages asking for an interview for this story. The Tribune reporter’s interview with a Police Captain was also canceled.
Following several shootings in April, the Police Chief was asked a direct question by a WNDU journalist for a specific count of shootings.
Joshua Short asked Chief Ruszkowski how many shootings (with victims) have there been in the city. He responded: “After one shooting, I stop counting because all of these shootings are frustrating and makes me sick to my stomach and we’re working to stop [this violence] all together.”
In a televised interview with WNDU in mid-June, Chief Ruszkowski allowed the characterization of South Bend’s rise in shootings as an “uptick” to stand unchallenged.
For a July 1, 2019 article on crime and policing, Chief Ruszkowski again declined Tribune interview requests, at the conclusion of what was likely a record-breaking month for shootings in South Bend.
South Bend has completed half of 2019 with a tally of violence comparable to full years. Yet Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski have not described the degree of this violent surge; when questioned, both have resorted to vague expressions about South Bend’s violent crime’s trend. At expected times when these leaders would provide an accounting of crime, interviews have been canceled, requests for information have not been returned, South Bend Police crime data websites have not been updated, and the media focus has been kept on particular incidents of crime. And the city’s violent crime wave continues today: on July 6, 2019, two teens have been shot in South Bend, and the sun is not yet down.
Postscript Update: Following publication of this article, the South Bend Police Dashboard has been updated with the June 2019 criminally assaulted shooting statistic. June had averaged roughly 7.6 shootings a month. The previous monthly record on the dashboard was March 2018, with 14. South Bend suffered 25 criminally assaulted shootings in June 2019.
Postscript Update 2: I have updated this column, including statistics and the chart, to account for Feb. 2019 crime data errors communicated to the public by the City of South Bend, as described in this column.
