It didn’t help the Midway’s image this weekend when a 7-Eleven on Midway Drive was robbed at gunpoint. It doesn’t help either then the same robber probably robbed a second 7-Eleven at Voltaire and Catalina, a few miles away.
The real damaging news about the Midway District came out this past weekend with a report that was published Sunday in the San Diego Union-Tribune about those neighborhoods where violent crime has been increasing – and the Midway District was included as one of those neighborhoods.
The authors of the report found the following:
From 2014 through 2018, violent crime has doubled — or more — in about 17 percent of all census block groups in the city. That’s an increase from the previous five-year period … The updated analysis includes data from 2018, and shows the average number of violent crimes among city census blocks was 27.
They looked at those neighborhoods at a granular level where violent crimes were at or above the average, determining the percent change over a 4-year period, 2014 through 2018. Their analysis includes murder, rape, aggravated assault and armed robbery (but not strong-arm robberies). The authors reported:
Overall, San Diego remains a city with low — but slowly increasing — violent crime. Reported violent crime increased about 3 percent from 2017 to 2018, according to the San Diego Association of Governments…
And then the bad news for the Midway:
The new analysis revealed that many neighborhoods with large violent crime increases from 2013 to 2017 fared better in the 2014 to 2018 period. Only two neighborhoods that logged the highest violent crime percentage increases between 2013 and 2017 remained on the 2014 to 2018 list.
The Loma Portal/Midway District/Point Loma Heights area remained at No. 5, among those with 27 or more crimes.
The U-T combined the Midway with Loma Portal and Point Loma Heights. According to their inter-active map of crime increases or decreases, the increases in crime in the 5 census block areas of the Midway the U-T considered, were – moving west to east – these percentage increases: 111%, 150%, 300%, 367% and 64%.
In comparison, much of Ocean Beach had decreases of 33% to 100%. There were increases, however, in a number of OB census blocks, such as – moving north to south – +200%, +29%, 7.7%, 12.5%, 100% increase; there were two groups with 0%. There seems to be a spike also in south OB – one census block had +87%.
Anybody who has been paying attention has noticed more crimes being committed in the Midway District. There was that road-rage beating just recently, there was that rapper seriously wounded by police, a woman was shot to death in Baron’s parking lot last September,
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
OB stats would be soooooo much higher if people actually reported the full gambit of crimes that occur.
What do you base that comment on, Tyler?
Not usually one to nitpick on grammar or word usage but I think you meant gamut.
My car was completely torched a couple years back – Police labeled it “vandalism” not “arson” – SDPD has an incentive to not report actual crime stats. Or why they are always locking up homeless crackheads downtown but not large mexican drug cartel associates.
Same with the homeless census every year, the SDPD locks up tons of homeless just before the census to gussy up the numbers.
San Diego has dirty, corrupt underbelly that keeps the reputation clean at the expense of justice. Not saying that OB has a ton of crime beyond the petty drugs, drink, fighting, theft…but still – under reporting by the SDPD is absolutely a fact.
Well, the question was about your OB comment not the PD in general. So what you meant by under reporting was a comment on the police not the citizens. It read like you meant people were not reporting crimes.
Sorry to hear about the car but we’d need to know a lot more to agree with your comment that it should have been classified arson. I’m curious how the insurance company classified it. Proving arson is difficult and requires an investigation taking time and money. Was there a reason to suspect arson and believe it was not just vandals?
I have to wonder about the police not wanting to report crime. They use those statistics when asking for more money and more police officers, I would think the incentive to report crime would be stronger.
As for Mexican cartels, you do understand that crimes of that nature are not in the wheelhouse of the San Diego PD. It takes the jurisdiction of the Federal government to handle that work. I don’t know what to say about the homeless crackheads. I don’t care if they are homeless or not, if they are using, or possess, crack, they are just as eligible for police action as anyone.
I also don’t understand the arrests of homeless “to gussy up the numbers.” What numbers do you mean? If you meant the homeless numbers, why do they need to arrest anyone for that?
“San Diego has dirty, corrupt underbelly that keeps the reputation clean at the expense of justice.” What does that mean?
You ended with “under reporting by the SDPD is absolutely a fact,” which was where we started. What can you provide to substantiate this absolute fact?