There's this guy named John Fortunato that keeps running for Sheriff here in Jefferson Parish for at least the last 2 or 3 elections. He claims the incumbent is a scheming politician that got installed as Sheriff by his predecessor when that man left the job to avoid scrutiny from an FBI investigation. There may be some truth to those claims. Down here, politics tend to be as dirty as the rice. ;)
He also claims that Rape has gone up by 10.5% and murder has increased by 80%. However, he doesn't say which two time periods were being compared for those statistics. Instead, he made the mistake of providing a web address to a file in the local Sheriff's office archive with crime statistics for the parish.
Here's a screen capture of that file...
They cover the differences between June and July of 2019 and the totals to date for 2018 and 2019. There has been some increase in rape and murder. However, those numbers are actually 10.7% and 76.5% for each respective crime.
Sounds bad right? Well, the percentages are very misleading here. The actual numbers for rape and murder so far in 2019 are a respective 62 and 30. Also, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Jefferson Parish has an estimated population of 434,051 people as of 1 July 2018. That means only 1 in about 14,468 residents of this parish have been murdered and 1 in 7,001 have reported a rape. Those numbers are so low, I could literally leave my doors unlocked all day and night without having to worry. In fact, overall crime has actually gone down. The numbers are so low they probably aren't even statistically relevant, but any reduction is good.
As I suspected, Fortunato is talking a lot of shit in a rather cynical attempt to make the incumbent look bad. It didn't help him win in the last election. It won't help him this time, either. Even if everything else he says about Sheriff Joe Lopinto was true, it no longer matters. In my opinion, this little white lie of his makes Fortunato completely untrustworthy. Looks like I know who I'll vote for in the Sheriff's election...
- Publius
Sources:
Jefferson Parish Crime Statistics - Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office
https://www.jpso.com/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/539
Jefferson Parish Population - Census.gov
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/jeffersonparishlouisiana/PST045218
