Computer system improvements are opening a new world for compiling, accessing and studying crime statistics in Douglas County.

Not only are law enforcement agencies and prosecutors benefiting from the improvements, but so are Lawrence and Douglas County residents.

In February, the Lawrence Police Department unveiled a neighborhood crime map for its Web site — www.lawrencepolice.org.

“This is something the neighborhood groups have been wanting,” Police Lt. David Cobb said.

Now, anyone can check out crime statistics not only for the whole city, but also in particular neighborhoods and even rural county sections.

“It doesn’t have everything, but its more than what we had before,” said David Born, a member of the Centennial Neighborhood Assn., after his first look at the online maps.

As for citywide crime statistics, the Web site allows a look at different ways of calculating crime totals. There are four different methods of counting crime totals used at the federal, state and local level. Two of the charts showed crime went down in 2002 compared to 2001 and two of them show it increased in ’02.

Crime trends

No matter which calculation you use, the crime totals didn’t change that much over the two-year period.

Under the Kansas Incident Reporting System used by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, one of the biggest differences shows up in the number of aggravated assaults and batteries. There were 155 such incidents reported in 2001 and in 2002 that jumped to 279.

Vehicle thefts took a big jump in 2002, from 135 in 2001 to 180. On the other hand, drug violations dropped in 2002, from 815 in 2001 to 676.

But in early March police officials and their crime analysts weren’t sure what the yearly differences meant, if anything.

Police officers would generally know well before the yearly crime stats are compiled if any particular crime category was showing a major increase, Sgt. Mike Pattrick said.

“Each officer gets information about a certain type of crime in his district,” Pattrick said. “Police are especially concerned about the type of crime committed and the type of person who is committing them.”

Information access

Both Lawrence Police and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office are moving into a more computerized system of keeping crime records, filing reports and accessing that information.

The police department was expecting to be able to send copies of its case report electronically to the Douglas County District Attorney’s office.

Police also developed a way to overcome a problem that existed in sending crime statistics to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Just as in Lawrence, rural Douglas County crime rates have changed little, according to sheriff’s office records. Nevertheless, patrol officers continue to get an increasing number of calls for service.

During 2002, sheriff’s patrol officers handled 18,004 service calls — an increase of 1,220 calls over 2001, records showed. There are 21 patrol officers, Trapp said.

Sheriff’s officers also conducted 26,571 civil and criminal process services for the courts. That is an increase of 4,732 over 2001. And more than 5,200 city and county criminal warrants were served, slightly higher than 2001.

More than 50 percent of the sheriff’s resources were devoted to jail operation, Trapp said. Last year there were 5,888 people booked into the jail. The jail housed an average of 118 prisoners a day, about the same as in ’01.

By the end of this year, sheriff’s officers expect to begin using new mobile data in-car computer system. That will allow officers to use laptop computers to retrieve information such as location, time of day and nature of crimes committed.

“We will be able to conduct systematic and sophisticated analyses of large amounts of crime information,” Trapp said.