A representative of the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office said statistics cited in a recent USA Today story on “rising crime” in The Villages don’t add up.
Lt. Robert Siemer spoke on the topic Wednesday morning before the Amenity Authority Committee.
Siemer, who serves as the sheriff’s office’s commander for The Villages, said he and his colleagues were perplexed by the story, which does not seem to reflect what is actually occurring here in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.
The sheriff’s office does not segregate out The Villages from the rest of Sumter County in the statistics it provides to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
He conceded that the murder rate grew from one in 2016 to six in 2017, but he said that can be deceiving. Because the numbers are so low in Sumter County, that kind of “blip” can make it seem like the murder rate has spiked.
He explained that two of the “murders” in the past five years were husband/wife suicide pacts in which the couples were facing difficult medical issues.
“Still each of those ‘counts’ as one murder,” he said.
Others included people from elsewhere who came here and committed murder in a rural part of Sumter County. One of those was the 2017 killing of a 29-year-old Leesburg man found dead in a burning car off Cherry Lake Road, just outside the Village of Caroline. Two brothers were later arrested in his death.
The story does not clearly describe how its statistics were collected for The Villages, which stretches over Sumter, Lake and Marion counties. Law enforcement in The Villages includes the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, the Lady Lake Police Department, the Fruitland Park Police Department and the Wildwood Police Department.
He added that the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office did not receive a public records request from the news organization, so it is unclear where it gathered information for the story.