Chief: Crime rate, ODs not necessarily linked
Some suggest Dayton’s drop in crime is related to surge in OD deaths.
Dayton has seen a significant drop in crime this year, igniting speculation that the reduction is linked to the explosive growth in fatal drug overdoses.
Dayton police Chief Richard Biehl, however, said crime trends often resist easy explanations and called it simplistic to suggest without any evidence that there’s a link between the crime rate and the rise in fatal drug overdoses.
An analysis by this newspaper found that the overwhelming majority of Dayton residents who died of drug overdoses earlier this year had arrest or criminal records.
But the correlation between crime and drug addiction is complex and misunderstood, and it’s important to note that Dayton saw decreases in all crime categories and not just those that are most closely associated with drug use and abuse, experts say.
What’s going on?
For the first time in possibly a decade or longer, all four of Dayton’s major crime categories this year experienced sizable decreases, police officials said.
Through the end of July, Dayton police received 1,230 fewer reports of property crimes (down 21 percent) and 380 fewer reports of violent crimes (down 11 percent), according to police stats.
Many people, including a former city of Dayton police sergeant and local residents, have claimed in online messages that crime is down because the drug addicts who break the law are dying in record numbers from opiate use.
“Can’t commit crime if you’re dead from heroin,” wrote one Facebook user.
“The criminals are overdosing,” wrote others.
Chief: Not so fast
Biehl said there is no research or evidence that suggests the two trends are connected.
Crime fell sharply nationwide in the 1990s and continues to trend downward, Biehl said, which has long puzzled researchers who have come up with a wide variety of explanations for what might have happened.
Biehl said the Dayton community may not conclusively find out for many years — or possibly never — what caused local crime fluctuations.
Paraphrasing a famous quote, Biehl said, “For every complex problem there is a simple solution, and it’s always wrong.”
“It’s not that these things aren’t worth exploring, but the answers don’t come easy,” he said.
Research suggests that drug addicts and users regularly are responsible for some property crimes, Biehl said.
But, he said, violent crime has significantly decreased in the city, which theories linking fatal overdoses to crime rates do not begin to explain.
Drug and narcotics violations are up in the city, and so is murder and non-negligent manslaughter.
But armed robbery, aggravated assault, residential burglary, motor vehicle theft and other major categories have substantially decreased.
Records of deceased drug users
Drug addicts and users often cross paths with law enforcement.
Between January and the end of April, about 130 people identified as Dayton residents died of unintentional drug overdoses in Montgomery County.
This newspaper ran the names of the deceased through the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, the Dayton Municipal Court and the municipal county courts to determine if they had been arrested, indicted or convicted of criminal charges locally.
Nearly three-fourths of the deceased had criminal or arrest records. Some had lengthy criminal histories for offenses such as robbery, violent attacks, domestic violence and shootings.
But many of the deceased had been accused or convicted of lower-level misdemeanor crimes, such as petty theft, obstructing official business, tampering with evidence, disorderly conduct and intoxication.
Of those with records, nearly one in five people had been arrested or charged with drug crimes only, such as possessing or using illegal substances or having drug abuse instruments or paraphernalia, this newspaper’s analysis found.
This newspaper analyzed records from local jurisdictions and did not perform national background checks on each of the deceased, meaning it’s possible they had run-ins with the law in other parts of Ohio or the country.
In the late 2000s, a report by the county’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Task Force estimated that as many as half of the daily jail population had been booked with drug charges or had prior bookings involving drugs.
That was then, opiates are now
Today’s opiate epidemic is vastly different than previous illegal drug epidemics that fueled violent crime, such as murder, assault and gang activity, said Andrea Hoff, director of prevention and early intervention with the Alcohol, Drug Addiction & Mental Health Services of Montgomery County.
The crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and the smaller methamphetamine epidemic of the 1990s involved stimulants that can contribute to aggressive and volatile behaviors, Hoff said.
Opiates are depressants that make people sedated and sleepy, and individuals who use opiates are more likely to be responsible for low-level crimes, like simple theft, in order to obtain enough money to pay for their next fix, she said.
Certainly, people who are addicted to drugs have behaviors that are harmful to the people around them, but that does not necessarily mean they are going on crime sprees, experts say.
People wrongly assume that most or all drug addicts pay for their illegal habits by committing other crimes, when research shows that threefourths of drug addicts and alcoholics have jobs, Hoff said.
“There really is a difference between someone who is addicted to drugs and someone who has criminal thinking,” she said.
Some people with substance abuse issues have criminal thinking or commit other crimes to feed their habit, but it’s irresponsible to paint all drug users with a broad brush, experts said.
Based on the screening tool called the Texas Christian University Drug Screen instrument, 73 percent of individuals coming to Ohio’s prisons indicated some need for substance abuse programming, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.