Evanston Patch article misleads on EPD comparison data

Submitted by Jim Hughes on Wed, 07/15/2020 - 14:12

Hi everyone,

I read this Evanston Patch article last night … and checked some of the references used… then found the numbers did not add up.

The article is ... Patch 7/14/2020: Amid Calls To 'Defund Police,' Evanston Mayor, Chief Talk Budget

From the article sub-headline: “Evanston's ratio of police to residents has been among the highest in Illinois.”

There is a lot of outside data in the article and that data generally supports the sub-headline despite the errors.

The article quotes two outside data sources to make comparisons with EPD ... this is where things go off track. 

I quote the article below and then the correction I think needs to be made.

  1. “Evanston's ratio of police personnel to population – about 269 department employees to 100,000 residents — compares to that of San Francisco, Miami or Little Rock, Arkansas, according to an analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice cited by Papachristos."

269 per 100,000 residents is about right for Evanston.  But the data for the other cities is actually the number of residents per police department employee … and not employees per hundred thousand residents.  So, this is not a valid comparison. Evanston actually has 364 residents per police department employee.  A much higher ratio than these three cities which run from 260-275.

 

  1. “Chicago's police to resident ratio is 40 percent lower — just 183 employees per 100,000 Chicagoans."

Chicago actually has about 506 employees per 100,000 residents.  Evanston has about 270. So, Chicago is actually about 100% higher and not 40% lower.

  1. “Apart from Chicago, Evanston had the fourth highest ratio of police to residents in the state, trailing only Addison, Elk Grove Village and Carbondale.”

The data for this comparison was from 2016 when Evanston PD  had 227 employees.  In 2020 that number is now 202 with unfilled open positions.  That would put Evanston at about 7th highest (below Chicago) on the list of 52 Illinois police departments. Still high on this measure when compared to 52 others in the database.  But in the top 15% not in the top 10%.

Jim Hughes

2518 Hartzell St.

 

 

The link to the Governing Magazine database was broken in the article.  The correct link is:

https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-officers-employment-data-by-city-department.html

 

Another usefel resource not linked was from the Office of Justice Programs:

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd16p.pdf

 

The Vera link is:

https://www.vera.org/publications/what-policing-costs-in-americas-biggest-cities

 

The 7/13/2020 EPD data is easier to read here at the original link below than it is in the Patch article insert:

https://www.scribd.com/document/469053287/Evanston-Police-Department-Budget-Presentation#fullscreen&from_embed