City of Morgan Hill Public Safety Master Plan

In its clearance calculations, the UCR program counts the number of offenses that are cleared, not the number of persons arrested. The arrest of one person may clear several crimes, and the arrest of many persons may clear only one offense. In addition, some clearances that an agency records in a particular calendar year, such as 2016, may pertain to offenses that occurred in previous years. In certain situations, elements beyond law enforcement’s control prevent the agency from arresting and formally charging the offender. When this occurs, the agency can clear the offense exceptionally . Law enforcement agencies must meet the following four conditions in order to clear an offense by exceptional means: The agency must have identified the offender; gathered enough evidence to support an arrest, make a charge, and turn over the offender to the court for prosecution; identified the offender’s exact location so that the suspect could be taken into custody immediately; or encountered a circumstance outside the control of law enforcement that prohibits the agency from arresting, charging, and prosecuting the offender.

TABLE 4-1: MHPD Clearance Rates 2015

Clearance Rate

2012-2015

Benchmark Clearance Rate

2012 Full Year

2013 Full Year

2014 Full Year

Previous 3 Yr. Avg.

2015 Full Year

Part 1 Violent Crimes

Homicide

--

100%

--

100%

100%

62% 37% 28% 54%

Rape

67% 38%

50% 20% 84%

67% 29% 78%

61% 29% 88%

50% 44% 68%

Robbery

Aggravated Assault

100%

Total Part 1 Violent Crimes

76%

70%

61%

69%

62%

47.6%

Part 1 Property Crimes

Burglary Larceny

22% 11%

23% 12% 10%

20% 14%

22% 12%

9%

13% 22% 12%

14% 10%

Motor Vehicle Theft

7%

9%

9%

Total Part 1 Property Crimes

13%

15%

14%

14%

12%

14.9%

Note : Data in this table provided by MHPD.

Table 4-1 shows that the MHPD clearance rate for violent crime in 2015 was 62.0 percent, and has been as high as 76 percent, which is substantially higher than the FBI average of 47.6 percent for communities of similar size to Morgan Hill. On the other hand, the MHPD clearance rate for property crimes is 12 percent, which is lower than the FBI average of 14.9 percent.

Clearance rate is the most important outcome measure used to evaluate the effectiveness of investigations. The performance of the MHPD in this area is very good. This indicates that the

Police Operations and Data Analysis Report, Morgan Hill, California

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