South Pasadena police report 11% drop in recorded Group A offenses after switch to NIBRS

South Pasadena Police Chief Brian Slinski told the Public Safety Commission on Sept. 23 that the department’s August statistics, submitted under the federal National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), show an 11% decline in total crimes compared with the same period last year. The department reported Group A offenses fell from 867 last year to 771 this year and said calls for service year-to-date stood at about 15,833, a roughly 15% decline from the prior year. Chief Slinski said the department recently moved from the FBI Part I crime reporting format to NIBRS, which “breaks it down into a lot more robust category” and can cause apparent increases in some counted crime categories even when actual occurrences do not rise. “That doesn't mean that crimes are increasing,” he said, and asked the commission and public to “look at the raw numbers.” Slinski described other changes behind the figures: adult arrests in the two most recent months rose by one arrest, juvenile arrests remain low while a new juvenile diversion program is being rolled out in coordination with the district attorney’s office, and targeted enforcement yielded higher parking and moving-citation counts as students returned to school. On traffic enforcement, Slinski said the department supplements regular patrol with overtime details and mutual assistance from neighboring agencies to focus on speeding and distracted driving. He cited a recent mutual operation in Azusa as an example of the reciprocal enforcement the city uses. Commissioners and City Council member Omari Ferguson asked how South Pasadena’s statistics compare with nearby jurisdictions and about dispatch outages. Slinski said South Pasadena typically appears on the lower end of crimes per capita compared with larger neighboring cities, and that dispatch outages are rare because of redundancies and mutual-aid arrangements (for example, San Marino or Alhambra handling calls while systems are down); he said data from such periods are collected and later entered if necessary. The commission did not take formal action on the report; members asked follow-up questions and were told staff will provide additional neighborhood-level statistics on request.