State's safest town? Police tout rating

The Haines Borough Police Department this week touted a ranking of the municipality as the "safest town in Alaska," posting a "Five Safest Cities" badge to its Facebook page.
SafeWise, a private company that allows users to compare home security systems, developed a list of the top five safest cities in Alaska with populations above 2,000. The company used the most recent FBI Crime Report statistics, which are from 2012.
The rankings are based on frequency of violent crime (rape, murder, robbery) and frequency of property crimes (burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson). According to SafeWise, 1.54 out of every 1,000 people in Haines experienced a violent crime; 10.83 out of every 1,000 people experienced a property crime.
As the rankings are based on 2012 statistics, the spike in thefts and burglaries that occurred in 2013 and 2014 are not taken into account.
Haines Police chief Bill Musser recently compiled crime statistics for the past six years. In 2012, police reported 25 thefts and two burglaries. In 2013, there were 48 thefts and 12 burglaries. In 2014, thefts neared the six-year average at 23, but burglaries remained above the average, at six.
Musser also recently provided "raw" numbers to the assembly in his report, which are higher than numbers sent to the Alaska Department of Public Safety and FBI Uniform Crime Report. The raw data provided by Musser (and included in the attached chart) represents calls for service, and provides a "snapshot" of the types of calls the department receives, he said.
"The raw data is what we get called about (calls for service), but does not necessarily represent what is reported as crime," Musser said. "That is why our tracked activities (calls for service) is different from the UCR submissions. Activity does not always equal a UCR crime. This is not just a Haines thing, as departments track their activities and their UCR crime throughout the country."
For example, some people call to report an attempted break-in or theft, but don't want to initiate a case and just want police to be aware of the issue, Musser said. That sort of call would be reflected in the raw data, but not the UCR report, he said.
In his recent "raw data" report, Musser also included numbers for fraud, domestic violence assault, criminal mischief and sexual abuse of a minor reports. Those types of crimes were not taken into account by SafeWise.
The next four safest towns, according to SafeWise, are Wrangell, Unalaska, Sitka and Nome.