Saturday, March 19, 2011

Bay City sees jump in number of sex crimes in 2010


By Cole Waterman | The Bay City Times
BAY CITY — The city saw a marked decline in the number of most property crimes last year, with fewer complaints of theft from buildings, motor vehicles, purse snatching and retail fraud.

But the number of sexual assault complaints increased sharply in the city, according to Bay City Police Department statistics for 2010.

First- and third-degree criminal sexual conduct complaints — the most serious sex crimes, involving penetration — increased nearly 61 percent, from 38 in 2009 to 61 in 2010.
Bay City police Chief Michael J. Cecchini said most of those cases followed a pattern last year.

“The increase isn’t in offenders who don’t know their victims or vice versa,” Cecchini said Thursday. “These are family-related issues. It’s a dramatic increase.”

The number of larceny complaints in the city dropped from 784 in 2009 to 726 last year, a decline of 7 percent. Thefts of motor vehicles were down from 47 in 2009 to 39 in 2010.

“You would think with our economy, they would be up,” Cecchini said of the trend. “I would like to think it’s due to our efforts in community policing and trying to reduce property crimes by education.”

While larceny complaints were down last year in the city, they jumped substantially in outlying Bay County. Sheriff John E. Miller said final 2010 figures for the county showed 585 larcenies, plus 24 motor vehicle thefts. In 2009, the sheriff’s office handled 459 larcenies, plus 34 reports of stolen vehicles.

Miller attributed the increase to the dour economy.

“That’s it — everything is economy driven,” he said Thursday.
But Miller said he thinks the frequency of larcenies reached a plateau over the winter.

“It’s been quiet the past few months, but that’s affected by the weather. Things pick up when it warms up,” he said.

Bay City saw arson reports decline by nearly 31 percent last year, with Bay City Police investigating nine arsons in 2010, compared to 13 in 2009. Cecchini said the decline is consistent with statewide and national statistics.

Bay City Police did investigate a greater number of burglaries in 2010, however. The number of burglaries topped off at 356, compared to 333 from the year before. The number of robberies stayed even, with 45 having been reported in both 2009 and 2010.

Deaths attributed to homicide decreased, with city police investigating only one in 2010 compared to two the previous year.

Police discovered the body of Lynn M. Spicer, of Endicott, N.Y., on Nov. 12, buried in a vacant lot at 108 Curtis St. on Bay City’s West Side. Jeffrey A. Julian II, 22, and his brother Craig A. 
Julian, 19, were arrested the same day and later charged with open murder and disposal of a dead body. Spicer had been dating and living with Jeffrey Julian.

The Julians are scheduled to go to trial before Bay County Circuit Judge Joseph K. Sheeran on May 3.

Cecchini said his department — composed of 55 officers and three civilian staff members — received 10 percent fewer calls for service in 2010, from 30,242 in 2009 to 27,144 in 2010. The chief attributed the drop to the department’s front desk only being open on Wednesdays and emergency calls being handled by 911.

He said a new clerical staff member will be hired soon, permitting the front desk once again to be open five days a week, starting in mid-April. 

Bay City Mayor Christopher Shannon said he was pleased with the dip in property crimes, though the spike in sexual crimes is a concern.

“Any time you see movement in those statistics, we’re concerned when they go up,” Shannon said
at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

One To See Change Past Posts

One to See Change Blog List

"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
~Adlia Stevenson U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)

On a Personal Note

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the issue of citizens’ rights, particularly addressing certain sex offenders’ crimes that do not fit the devastating, inequitable and endless punishment given.


As you know, many young men and women lives across the nation are being destroyed by incarceration, life-time registry and restrictive laws that do more harm than good. For those individuals, there is no second chance.

Below is a personal letter to President Obama:
* * * *
“Dear President Obama,

I truly agree with your sentiments that individuals, such as ex-felons, should be able to receive a second chance at life. Since we all know that one can veer off that path of life and travel along rough, rocky terrain, sometimes running off and ending up in some ditch. We all have made our fill of mistakes and sometimes those held a costly consequence that changed life forever. So we lived through it, trying harder to make things right with family, friends and those around us, but what about those who aren’t able to make things right even if they tried…because they’re labeled as too dirty, a leper, a person who is rejected from society and home.

But what if they’re a seventeen year old and had sex with a fifteen year old, consensual at that? Or they’re a teen that had gotten so enraged after a breakup that he sent out naked pictures of his girlfriend on his cell phone or email? Or an individual urinates where someone just happens to see them?

All are wrong and a travesty but do they deserve the life of no second chance with a registry that ends all. They are labeled, no jobs, no where to live…they have been deemed a menace to society, a plague. These certain circumstances, and many other situations similar to these, I believe still deserve a second change.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

After my son’s early release and two years of prison, I thought I had handled that fact graciously knowing after serving his time he would be able to get that fresh start, that second chance. He was an exemplary inmate, GED, college courses and vocational classes. Little did I know that a second chance on the outside was the farthest from the truth? He now struggles and lives in a trailer park sharing a trailer with another and surrounded by others in the same rocking boat, one to float endlessly in shark infested waters. I see him little because of probation requirements (he couldn’t live with us because we were 800 feet near a school). My family is afraid of what would happen to them if he lived with them…vigilantism. My son has no other place to stay since others condemn him of his crime that is screamed from the highest rooftop. Sex offender, sex offender!

Not all sex offenders are pedophiles or predators but some are simply young kids that make one stupid and rash decision that eventually changes everything, and they have no idea what they’ve done until their life is never their own. Exactly, where is that second chance for those sex-offenders who are lumped together with pedophiles and predators? Now, it makes me sick to think of my son’s future and many like him that are on the registry and many with no second chance…ever. I am asking you as a mother and as another concerned citizen of the United States that these laws are looked at again and taken into serious consideration in what they are doing to the Constitution of the United States, not for sex offenders in general but the future rights of every citizen, before anymore are put into effect. They unjustly strip an offender of their rights and place them in a guillotine that can be easily set off by anyone and at anytime. Where is the second chance for ex-sex offenders in the present, pending and future laws?”
* * * *
What truly saddens me is the weakness and deterioration of what the sex offense issue is doing to our once, great nation. Across Europe, others are seeing the injustice and disregard of rights, but we ignore this problem and it makes me wonder where humanity is heading….

We have become a hysterical society in which our latest witch-hunt is a sex offender--no matter his/her crime.

Below is a email sent from a foreign advocate to a father of a sex offender:
* * * *
“The tragic story of your son's death is just so sad that it's difficult to explain how. It was very hard to read your letters. It seems almost unbelievable that this can take place in a democracy! From our point of view, there is no justice in this. Not in any way: not for you, your son, the former girl friend – or even the state.

It is an abusive legal system. It seems barbaric. And we are so very sorry that this takes place. That's why it's so important for us to try to neutralize the debate with this…, hopefully making some changes. ….. to show the every day life of the sex offenders, trying to show how they keep on being punished, even after served prison time…..But we will for sure tell the story of the injustice that your son has been exposed to.”
* * * *
I appreciate everyone's commitment and backing to protect everyone's civil rights, plainly as noted in the Constitution of the United States and is presupposed, giving ALL men are “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”