Click image for enlargement. RELATED STORY Making sense of the Uniform Crime Report Advertisement

Conspiracy theorists who believe the ubiquitous "they" are always watching you may have a point, at least when it comes to crime.

Thanks to the Uniform Crime Reporting program, first established in 1930, the FBI, along with local law enforcement agencies, are in fact always watching the criminal activity taking place throughout the nation.

"It's a way for the state and federal government to see where we are now in a snapshot way," Nye County Sheriff's Office crime analyst Ray Roberts explained.

In addition, the UCR provides a clearance rate, or the number of crimes for which a suspect was developed based on probable cause.

A crime that is cleared does not necessarily mean the suspect was arrested, much less prosecuted in court; it simply means enough evidence was acquired during the investigation to arrest or pursue charges against a specific person.

Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo attributes a 31 percent decrease in the county's clearance rates over three years to improper reporting procedures that were in place prior to his taking office.

He said prior to his being sheriff, crimes were listed as cleared even when they didn't meet UCR standards.

"I wanted to be honest with the citizens of Nye County as to what was going on in their communities," DeMeo said of reinstating the UCR standards.

Crimes are indexed into categories that include murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson, but those are listed in accordance with UCR definitions (see related article).

For the sheriff's office, the UCR is far more than a compilation of tables and stats.

Here in Nye County, for example, Roberts will analyze the ever-incoming flow of statistics weekly, if not daily, in an effort to gauge the effectiveness of initiatives or identify areas that may require more patrolling.

"I'm always about 24 hours behind," Roberts said.

Roberts said he gets phone calls regularly from residents asking about the crime rates or types of crime in their area, and he uses the UCR statistics to answer those questions.

In addition, the identification of patterns or trends of crimes committed locally can aid law enforcement in stopping the crime.

For example, if there is a high percentage of a specific type of crime in one area, the street crimes unit will be notified.

The UCR reports also offer an overall gauge in measuring how effective new policing methods, such as community based policing, have been.

"We'll never know if we made a crime impact until we see the UCRs for that year," DeMeo explained. "We can see if crime has decreased how successful we are, if the initiatives we're putting in place have taken effect."

The FBI keeps a close watch on the numbers and is perpetually comparing them to counties or regions of comparable population.

A slight jump or sharp decline in crime can "trigger" the FBI, who then notify the sheriff's office and want to know a reason for the change.

Sometimes, Roberts explained, a jump in one stat may reflect a large number of arrests made. For example, 13 individuals were cited in the recent burglary ring that was broken up.

In other instances, where there is a sudden drop in crime, there simply hasn't been any crime.

Despite a steadily increasing crime rate in Nevada, the crime rate in Nye County has remained relatively stable from 2003 to 2006, according to data from the UCR.

Crime has steadily risen in the Silver State since 2003, when 110,520 crimes were recorded, translating into a crime rate of 48.12 incidents per 1,000 residents.

Of those, 20,346 were cleared, a clearance rate of 18.41 percent.

That same year the Nye County Sheriff's Office reported 1,294 of those crimes, giving the county a crime rate of 35.31 per 1,000.

The county clearance rate was 51.55 percent, meaning 667 of the crimes were cleared.

The UCR also breaks down the number of arrests by specific offense for a reporting agency.

In all three years examined by this article, the category of "all other offenses (non-traffic)" is always the highest.

After that is taken into consideration, however, for 2003 Nye County deputies made more arrests for drug abuse violations, 275 to be exact, than for any other offense.

In 2004, 113,289 crimes were committed in Nevada, but the overall crime rate (possibly due to a fluctuation in population) went down from the previous year to 44.98.

State law enforcement officials cleared 21.38 percent of those, or 24,219 cases.

The county also saw a slight increase in the number of crimes committed that year, reporting 1,321 offenses, a crime rate of 34.60 per 1,000 residents.

Deputies reported 590 of those cleared, translating into a clearance rate of 44.66 percent.

After "all other offenses," the most arrests made that year were for 285 non-aggravated assaults, followed closely by 265 drug abuse violations.

In 2005, Nevada reported 117,813 crimes, a crime rate of 46.77.

The state had a clearance rate of 20.37 percent, or 23,997 of the above listed crimes.

Nye County reported 1,265 of the crimes that year, a county crime rate of 30.63.

Deputies cleared 46.88 percent of those, or 593.

The highest number of arrests (after the "all other offenses" category) was the 374 made for offenses against family and children.

This was followed by 287 arrests made for larceny/theft.

Finally, in 2006 Nevada reported 121,353 crimes, a crime rate of 46.26 and a clearance rate of 16.69 percent (or 20,259 cleared offenses).

Nye County reported 1,090 crimes and a crime rate of 24.33, clearing 37.98 percent or 414 of those.