Crime in the City of Lake Worth, what if. . . (a task for an enterprising reporter)

What if there is something wrong with the crime data? I am not saying there IS. Just suggesting there might be. At the beginning of the year wrote this article about an Interactive Map published by The Palm Beach Post. The reporters who compiled the information made the common mistake of using 'Lake Worth' addresses to conclude there were 50 homicides in the City between 2009 and 2014. There were 30 homicides, not 50.

To the Post's credit they fixed the map to accurately reflect the reality. I remember at the time thinking how many people researched a possible relocation to Lake Worth to say purchase a home, for instance, and decided not to because of the 'high murder rate' they discovered on the Post's web site. Just a thought but I digress.

Now consider this: a 'reporter' in Lake Worth (Ms. Menge) who claims to be an experienced researcher on several occasions published crimes in her paper that occurred outside the City limits but she reported them as occurring IN the City. Another blogger in Lake Worth many times has posted crimes IN the City but were actually committed outside the City borders; sometimes well outside, west of Lantana near the airport in one case. In another instance recall a crime in John Prince Park that one of the above attributed to the City.

How did this happen? Are they making the data up or altering the data? It's certainly possible but don't think so.

Could it be that human error at PBSO is incorrectly attributing crimes outside the City (in unincorporated Palm Beach County) to District 14? The only way to know for sure is to ignore the data and look at the actual crime reports. That's something that I am tracking down.