Blue crush.

Benjamin Wallace--Wells should be commended for his recent cover story exposing the dangerous cutbacks in many of our nation's police departments ("Bush's War on Cops," September). The issue deserves attention, and Wallace-Wells's primary contention--that cutting funding for police forces during this era of increased police responsibility and economic stagnancy is both irresponsible and potentially deadly--is beyond argument. Unfortunately, much of the evidence he marshals to prove his claims remains highly speculative and a bit misleading.

First is Wallace-Wells's assertion that the cutbacks in police staffing levels in certain jurisdictions (like Richmond, Va.) have contributed to the very modest upturn in the country's murder rate during the past few years. As he highlights, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, the murder rate increased by nearly 1 percent between 2001 and 2002, and stands a few percentage points higher than back in 2000.

Yes, murder is up nationwide, albeit slightly, and "the sudden disintegration of the police forces," as Wallace-Wells puts it, may have something to do with the upsurge. Yet cops do more than solve (let alone prevent) murders--and homicides represent a tiny fraction of the nation's violent crimes. If the dissipation of police forces has contributed to the rise in murders, surely a similar pattern holds for more common offenses.

Unfortunately, the correlation doesn't hold--a fact that Wallace-Wells fails to mention. According to the FBI's calculations, between 2001 and 2002 the overall violent crime rate actually declined by 1.4 percent. This finding is validated by the 2002 National Criminal Victimization Survey published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics: It reports that between 2001 and 2002, relatively common offenses like robbery and assault fell significantly. In fact, the overall property and violent crime rates in the 2002 report are the lowest recorded since the program's inception 20 years ago.

Moreover, Wallace-Wells's reliance on rising murder rates as evidence of the effects of police understaffing isn't particularly convincing either. He argues that those cities "that suffer from the worst cop shortages are also experiencing the most dramatic spikes in crime", citing places like Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles, Calif., as examples. Again, there may be some truth to this claim. But he doesn't mention New York City's police force--so large that back in 2000 it comprised a tenth of the nation's total--and its own recent staff cutbacks. In New York City, the number of officers assigned to precincts has declined significantly over the past few years. Meanwhile, the murder rate has dropped to its lowest level in over four decades.

So what is the relationship between recent cop shortages and crime levels? It is simply too soon to tell. It may be that in certain jurisdictions--like Richmond--police staffing shortages have contributed to rising crime. But no evidence exists to generalize this trend to the nation as a whole. Indeed, cities with historically high homicide rates, like St. Louis, have continued to enjoy declining homicide rates despite budget shortages. Preliminary studies on these matters are underway but no hard evidence exists as of yet.

Jake Rosenfeld

Princeton, N.J.