New Orleans Citizen Crime Watch

In addition to reducing crime, New Orleans Police Department 12-hour shifts reduced rainfall over the summer.

That’s right. New Orleans’ rainmaker Warren Riley produced a 27.82 percent decrease in precipitation between July and October compared to the previous four-month period.

The police chief is claiming that his policy of extending police patrols to 12-hour shifts caused a 14 percent reduction in crime.

The problem with the Riley’s analysis is that he hasn’t shown causality. Without accounting for specific actions that produced a causal effect, and without statistical significance, any measured crime reduction is merely a simple correlation. The chief’s logic is little different than saying that the Saints winning season is due to a quiet hurricane season. We certainly welcome both, but they are mere correlations. The Saints performance and hurricanes vary independently of one another.

Of course, an increase of police presence on the streets may have a direct impact on crime, and crime-weary residents would welcome any strategy that works. Unfortunately, Chief Riley’s statistics don’t show that specific NOPD tactics made an impact. It’s just as likely — meaning no disrespect — that police spent the extra four hours eating donuts, hanging out in coffee shops, or parked in discrete locations watching movies on DVD players with the engine running and the A/C kicked on high.

Would Riley claim that 12-hour shifts also caused the 32 percent increase in rapes? Or was the unfortunate increase merely a correlation that occurred independent of 12-hour shifts? And if the incidence of rape occurred irrespective of the duration of patrol hours, shouldn’t we then question the veracity of Riley’s claim that 12-hour shifts caused a reduction of crime?

Of course, it’s equally likely that the reported increase in rape incidents is merely the result of an increase in the recorded incidents of rape. We already know that the NOPD was caught cooking the books on rape statistics earlier this year. Precisely because Warren Riley’s prior statistical methods lack credibility, we should all question the veracity of his current claims.

What might show a causal relationship between tactics and crime rates is the quality of arrests, for example, or increased police interventions in targeted areas.

In fact, a stronger argument could be made that federal sweeps to arrest fugitives provide a stronger causal explanation for the crime reductions than Warren Riley’s 12-hour shifts. There were at least three sweeps over the summer which netted hundreds of criminal offenders. Included among 264 arrests executed in Southeast Louisiana by Operation Falcon during the last week of June were 5 arrests for suspects wanted for murder in New Orleans. Arresting the small percentage of repeat offenders responsible for committing 90 percent of crime probably had more to do with any discernible crime reduction over the last few months, and given that reality, a strong argument could be made that the last-minute $2 million demand Riley made to the City Council to pay for 12-hour shifts could have been spent more effectively elsewhere.

Moreover, until and unless the NOPD allows for independent auditing of crime statistics, as Citizen Crime Watch has advocated, the NOPD will be challenged to restore its credibility with the community. The best solution would be for the NOPD to release its data, with care taken to protect the privacy of victims and witnesses, precisely as other police departments around the country have done.

In the meantime, since Warren Riley is groveling for credit, here are a couple of other things that correlated with 12-hour shifts:

1) Thanks to longer hours, Kris Allen won American Idol.

2) Mya and Donny Osmond are poised to win Dancing with the Stars.

Unfortunately, the streetcar still doesn’t run on schedule. Riley can’t claim to take credit for fixing that problem with 12-hour shifts.