Police Departments and Crime Status in Virginia Communities: An Assessment from the Citizen Perspective

Abstract

This report presents the first extensive assessment of crime status and police performance for communities in Virginia. Twenty-four counties and 29 cities were studied for the period 2015 and 2016. Performance was rated from a citizen, rather than a professional law enforcement perspective. Special attention was given to African American communities. The assessment utilized publicly accessible data sources including demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, police department web sites, FBI UCR crime statistics, media reports, and other data.

We conclude that community history and characteristics, along with police performance, are major influences on local crime rates. This is a preliminary report, pending transfer of data to relational database format, which is expected to facilitate more extensive data comparisons.