Alcohol, Crime, and DUIs

Yesterday we looked at the background surrounding the issue of allowing the sale of beer and alcohol in the City. Today I’ll discuss guidelines for helping decide whether or not a PCN should be issued. In this article, I show the relationship between the number of alcohol outlets and serious crime and DUIs.

There are two graphs above. One deals with DUIs and the other deals with serious crime. Both of them show the influence of increasing number of outlets that sell alcohol. Here are some notes to help you understand the information

• · The 10 cities listed in the charts are all managed by OC Sheriff’s Department and therefore the methods of gathering data and categorizing crimes are presumed identical.
• · The number of alcohol outlets is based on ABC data May 2014 for “active retail licenses”. The outlets are expressed per 100,000 people
• · The crime data is based on FBI Part 1 crimes for 2013 for all cities managed by OC SD in South Orange County. Crimes are expressed per 100,000 people
• · The DUI data is based on OCSD crime statistics 2013

The two charts are remarkably alike. They show that the more outlets that sell alcohol, the higher the rates of serious crime and DUI arrests.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the Police contract and on Monday we’ll look at the animal care issue. All these issues are coming up at the Tuesday night Council meeting.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on August 15 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.