65.9 F
Ocala
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Ocala Police Department disputes gun violence statistics cited in report

The Ocala Police Department is taking issue with a recent study citing exceptionally high levels of gun violence in the city.

The study, which was released by Gun Violence Archive and reported on by the Miami Herald and Security.org, claimed that Ocala has more gun incidents than Chicago and Detroit. Police say that information is incorrect and the data collected was misrepresented in the study. They’ve contacted Gun Violence Archive to remove or fix the information but have not gotten a response, a report says.

Ocala Police officials looked into the incident reports that were used to come up with the numbers cited in the stories and discovered that some of the incident addresses were outside the city limits in Marion County, the report says.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of Marion County is 354,353 and Ocala is 59,253. When the total number of incidents is divided by Ocala’s population number instead of that of Marion County, the resulting numbers reflect what appears to be a large number of per capita gun violence for Ocala, which isn’t factual, officials say.

Police also cite the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting data, which shows that Ocala has only seen a small percentage change in violent offenses with a firearm. The semiannual report, which was completed in August, shows a 15.71 percent increase in violent offenses with a firearm from 2018 – not the 442 percent increase represented by the Archive study.

Police also say their Major Crimes and Patrol bureaus are actively working a variety of operations and task forces to bring the number down and combat some of the trends in violence Ocala has been experiencing lately.