Dear editor, And dear mayor and police chief, I need your help.

I’m trying to explain crime to my 6-year-old girl. I’ve used recent Register articles (as well as the real-life examples of recent gang tags, new in our neighborhood) to provide examples. I, for one, am at a loss about recent activities, news reporting and explanations. I need to know why one recent article states downtown crime is not on an upswing, but the article next to it reads the story of the student gunned down in AmCan. First of all, that seemed a slap in the face of victim and family. Second, it’s significant that the article provided very little in the way of citywide or area crime stats and tunnel visioned on assault stats for the downtown core only. It entirely downplayed that fact that a gun-toting assailant was walking our “tourist-friendly” core and is still apparenly at large. I need to know why noise complaints, break and enters, any other violations on persons, vagrancy calls, auto theft, etc., were not stated.

Perhaps, on a review of the stats, readers would realize that in those statistical columns, Napa citywide nears urban center stats. (A sidebar to Downtown Joe’s proprietor regarding noise complaints and the crime article in general: A Napa local, indeed any local in a tourist town, can be your greatest public relations tools or a PR nightmare. I have on several occasions steered the tourist trade well away from Joe’s. That position was solidified on a recent walk by Joe’s with windows literally rattling on the so-called “peaceful” hip hop night.)

Finally, I also need to know why the recent article about the city employee who cleans “gang tagging” is seeing an increase in tagging, which the police state usually corresponds with an increase in gang activity. Am I just neurotic or does increased gang activity equal increased crime? Maybe the crimes have just been more sensational, maybe because my daughter’s school was also recently broken into and heavily vandalized, maybe because I saw my wife and little girl in the article about the attempted carjacking at gunpoint, but it seems said article intimated that in terms of crime, “Hey, we’re fine.”

David Robertson / Napa