What’s the real versus the reported Twin Cities crime rate?

Glynn Merriewether says a lot of crime never gets reported.

Merriewether is a Hennepin County "community coach" in the juvenile justice system. The court assigns juveniles to him, and he counsels them on how to stay out of trouble.

His comments contrast with official rates of reported crime nationally and locally, which are down, and in some categories, way down.

Among juveniles in Hennepin County, for example, officials say crime in various categories is down anywhere from 20 percent to more than 50 percent.

"The stats might show that the arrests are down, but the crimes are not," Merriewether told me. "Stabbings, the muggings, the robberies, the thefts they continue. Whether they are all caught and processed and go through the system, that's a different story."

Here's a finding from a 2003 Minnesota survey:

Sixty-seven percent of 2001 crime victims did not report one or more incidents to the police, the same percent as in the 1999 crime survey.

It's from this report.

But tread carefully through this and other documents like it. There are lots of qualifications and in this case, it's a voluntary survey, not a scientific study.

Still, there appears to be a large amount of unreported crime in Minnesota and across the country.

Share your experience with The Cities. Why didn't you report the crime?

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