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October 9, 2025 5 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You've heard him on before. Mike O'Donnell is a numbers
nerd who loves to dig into statistics and then write
stuff about it. And he had a great column yesterday
at the Rocky Mountain Voice about the crime statistics for
Colorado and they are not good at all. Mike, welcome
back to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
First of all, thank you very much, Mandy. I appreciate
you inviting me back.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Well.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I so enjoy your nerdy work, and this nerdy work
is very disheartening. I'm not going to lie. What did
you dig into to get this data about the crime stats?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
What I do is the FBI does a really good
job collecting or canvassing all of the different agencies across
the United States to collect the information about incidents and
crimes that are puted in jurisdictions. And you can look
at the information down to an individual county or a
city and collect these from across the country and the states.

(00:54):
And so what I did was I was curious about
the two main categories. We've got violent crimes and we've
got property crimes. And first of all, I looked at
violent crimes because that scares me a little bit, and
I wanted to see you know, how many crimes are
occurring in Colorado for one hundred thousand of population, and
then compare that with the rest of the country. Because

(01:15):
everyone talks about the fact that crime writes it down,
there's not that much violence, all this sort of stuff,
And I wanted to just see if that was actually
true and whether they were going down fast in Colorado
or slow or not at all. So that was really
my intent is looking at the numbers and overlaying them
with census system, the data for Colorado to see whether

(01:37):
things were changing.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So what did you find out? And I want to
start with just the basic numbers in Colorado and what
I'd like you to do, Mike, just because when you
start throwing out a bunch of numbers on the radio,
it gets hard to follow.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
So let's find out.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, let's stick to percentage increases. How about that or
percentage decreases because those are easy, right, So what did
you find out about crime in Colorado?

Speaker 3 (01:58):
First, Well, chrime.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Has been going down in terms of just the percentage numbers.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
It's decreasing and it.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Has been doing that since twenty twenty two is our
peak year in Colorado. About the number of property crimes
as well as violent crimes.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
And when we looked.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
At it's gone down but per capita, and it has
gone down to capita. But when you compare Colorado with
the rest of the country, it's gone down faster and
further in pretty much every other state other than Colorado
and perhaps one.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Or two others.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
So the challenge we have is when we go from
you know, like two thousand and one and we have
less property crime than we did, then almost by it's
down by it's down. Where's my numb it's down by
about fifty. Well, it's just sends me down significantly, by

(02:53):
almost about half. But it's come down much more rapidly
for the rest of the country, the whole, and from
those states in particular.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
That's truly disheartening. And you don't really dive into it
in the article that you did for the Rocky Mountain Voice.
You don't necessarily dive into what you think the underlying
causes are. I mean, I can they're all political and
some of the criminal justice reform we've seen happen in
Colorado has been absurd in making crime so much easier.
Do you have any data about what other states have

(03:27):
done or is there is there any analysis of why
there's such a big difference, is it? Have you done
any of that?

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Not so much other than it's just anecdotal. We know
that a lot of mayors in big cities, you know,
don't like the fact that people get put in prison,
so they avoid putting people in prisons. Right, This is
something that that I'm sure you've talked about in the past.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Is that and when you look at this is another
future article. But I ask, you, know the Google.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
II program, why has property crime, for example, dropped? Google
will not give you the answer. AI will not give
you the answer. One of the reasons is it incarceration.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Rates have actually increased. So I thought I'd.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Actually look and see that we actually have fewer prisoners
incarcerated in Colorado in twenty twenty five than we had
in two thousand and two, in two thousand and one,
So what's happened is that we're not incarcerating people, We're
not giving them a disincentive to commit crimes. And when
you don't tell people not to do things, you know,

(04:27):
or give them a reason, you know, they get a
slap on the ridge. They can they can steal two
or three cars instead of one car. There's no three stripes.
You're out like some states used to have. You can
just do that with impunity and just talking about statistics,
I mean on the property crime, you know, that includes
things like stealing cars, and in Colorado. Across the United States,

(04:49):
the number of car thefts in the last twenty five
years has gone down that angercent, but in Colorado it's
gone up one hundred and five percent. So we've doubled
our car theft because obviously we're not disin sending people
to steal cars.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Amen to that. That's a nice way to say, disincentivizing
people to steal cars out there. That's that's a really
really nice way to put it. You can follow Mike
on X. You can also Mike what's your handle on
X it's just.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
M O'donald's are pretty simple m o'donald.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
He posts the most interesting nerdy things. And I appreciate
you making time for me today, Mike, No, my pleasure.

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