Local law enforcement aren’t concerned with myths about crime rates being connected to superstitious dates on the calendar.

Today is Friday the 13th and next Saturday, May 21, there will be a full moon, but Vicksburg police Chief Walter Armstrong and Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace both say they haven’t seen a change in the amount of crime that occurs on these days.

“I’m not superstitious,” Pace said, adding he doesn’t know anyone in the sheriff’s office who is superstitious.

He said if there were a time when crime rates really do rise, it would be around the first of the month because that is typically just after payday, especially the weekends when payday falls toward the end of the week.

“The spikes that we see usually are directly related to when payday falls,” Pace said.

He said a few years ago a student was doing a research paper on how full moons impact crime rates. After looking through crime reports and comparing them to the lunar calendar, Pace said no correlation was found.

“We actually didn’t see any spike, but some people will say that the full moon actually does have something to do with it,” Pace said.

He has heard officers reference a full moon when multiple incidents are reported in a small amount of time.

“I think you’ll hear a lot of law enforcement officers jokingly mention that,” Pace said. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, it must be a full moon.’”

Still, he said he has never seen anything that would indicate the superstitious days have any impact on crime.

Armstrong does not believe in superstitions either and as far as he knows no one at the police department is superstitious. While he has heard the myths that go along with full moons and Friday the 13th, he said he has never noted anything out of the ordinary actually occurring on those days.

“I personally haven’t noticed anything along those lines,” Armstrong said.

He said nothing would change as far as law enforcement presence on those days because for him it will just be a typical day.

“We see those things as a myth, and we continue to do our job as we would on Friday the 12th or 10th or first,” Armstrong said. “We try to be prepared for anything.”