We are having a crime wave — of crime-related news, of crime-related politics, even of crime-related technology. But are we actually having more crime? Your guess is as good as mine.

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That’s because crime is perhaps the most difficult thing in the world to measure. Consider this from the FBI, whose Uniform Crime Reporting statistics are the basis for almost every crime news story and national crime ranking: “Valid assessments are possible only with careful study and analysis of the various unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction.” In other words, the talking suit on the evening news who throws around crime numbers like New Year’s Eve confetti has about as much credibility as that confetti.

Nevertheless, people are taking advantage of these numbers. Two for-profit web sites have launched in the past couple of months, offering real-time statistics by ZIP code and neighborhoods. This doesn’t include the Dallas Police Department’s free site, which provides monthly updates. And let’s not overlook all of the top 10 lists, whether it’s Forbes — compiling a list of the country’s most sinful cities using the FBI numbers — or annual rankings of the most dangerous cities in the United States (Dallas was 34, 34 and 22 in the past three years) from the company that publishes Congressional Quarterly.

In addition, local television, faced with increasingly fewer viewers, has tightened its grip on crime reporting. The regular audience for local TV news has declined by more than a quarter since 1993, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Meanwhile, the project reported, crime has grown to account for as much as 42 percent of local newscasts, up from about one-third earlier this decade.

Which hints at the larger problem, which the statistics actually exacerbate. We’re using the numbers, which we can get more quickly and manipulate more easily, to scare ourselves to death. In the mid-1990s, I interviewed a Dallas deputy chief about crime in the Skillman/Live Oak area. At the time, there was a drug store and a package liquor store on the corner of Skillman and Oram (where the Coldwell Banker office is today).

That neighborhood was so dangerous, the chief said, that he didn’t feel safe sitting in his police car holding a shotgun. By way of comparison, 382 crimes were reported in 1995 in the three police reporting areas (called beats) that intersect at that corner. In 2006, there were 305 crimes — a 20 percent decrease. There was one murder in that three-beat neighborhood from 2001 to 2006, and four rapes. Those are practically Highland Park numbers, where there were two murders and two rapes in the same six-year period.

Yet does anyone who lives there today feel especially safe?

This is not to argue against crime statistics or crime reporting. We’ve done that at the Advocate as long as we’ve been in business, and it has value. It’s also not to make light of crime or to argue that we don’t need to do more to fight it. We need more cops, and we need to do what’s necessary to pay for them — even if it means raising taxes.

But this is also an argument for more perspective, which will help us make better decisions about what to do with the extra cops if we ever get them past the bureaucrats and bosses downtown.

Case in point? Last summer’s dustup over whether police should answer business burglar alarms before the alarms were verified by business owners. There was no statistical evidence that cops responding before verification made any difference, yet the City Council and Mayor Park Cities almost hurt themselves in their haste to reinstate the policy.

It was the council’s perception of crime (plus its almost childlike desire to please the mayor) that convinced them, and not any particular fact or statistic.

That’s no way to fight crime. All that does is confuse the issue, and most of us are confused enough already.