This week, we’re talking to Las Cruces Sun-News reporter Justin Garcia. Justin covers local government and public safety for the newspaper. Through a public records request, he recently obtained Las Cruces crime statistics for this year through June — the last month for which stats are currently available.
What we’ve found, in raw numbers, is that more crimes have been reported in every category, year-to-date, except for robbery and rape. But, as Justin will explain, it’s not that simple. In fact, it can be really difficult to compare "apples to apples," so to speak, because of external factors that change from year to year.
We’ll talk about that — and some of the caveats that, as reporters, are important for us to consider when crunching the numbers.
This week, we’re pleased to be joined by Justin.