"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable."   - Mark Twain

     Recently, you may have heard my opponent assailing the hard working men and women of the Sheriff's Office with claims that Fort Bend County has a low crime solve rate. As "proof" he has offered statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR). These are derived from data provided by every police agency in the United States. Unfortunately, one of the known errors with these statistics is the inconsistency of the data reported. It is for this reason that the FBI strongly warns against using the statistics for comparisions between agencies.

     As a result of the claims made by my opponent, Sheriff Wright discovered that an egregious error had persisted for years in the manner that data was reported by the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office to the UCR. A function of the computerized reporting system used by the Sheriff's Office was not properly collecting and reporting case closure data. Data was being manually collected by a single employee in the Records Division and submitted to UCR. Unfortunately, the manner in which the data was being manually collected was only accounting for actual arrests made by deputies and did not account for charges filed later as the result of investigations - a gross under reporting of actual case clearances. The problem with the computerized reporting system was promptly corrected and efforts were made to resubmit the corrected data for the UCR in 2010 and for the most recent year ended in 2011. The graph below shows the actual data represents much higher crime solve rates than my opponent alleges and an improvement in 2011 over 2010.

     Despite the stubborn FACTS presented by the Sheriff's Office, my opponent continues to ply erroneous "statistics" in an effort to denigrate the employees of the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office.

     I proudly stand behind Sheriff Milton Wright and the efforts of the outstanding men and women of the Sheriff's Office. I pledge to continue to improve upon the great reputation of the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office as your next elected Sheriff.