Police statistics show crime level is steady

It has been a long time since the Police Department has made any crime statistics public but at a presentation last week to a tourism industry seminar Assistant Commissioner Edwardo Wade ran down the numbers … and they make for interesting reading. In a snapshot, the figures from 2002 to the present for the major crimes of murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and theft show that, for the most part, the level of crime has remained fairly steady. In 2005, for example, while the eighty-one murders was second only to 2002’s eighty-seven, rapes fell to a four year low of forty-seven and burglaries also bottomed out at one thousand six hundred sixty. While, according to projections, murders and robberies are on a path toward a record high in 2006, rapes, burglaries and thefts are below historical peaks … and this is despite an increasing population. Of course, there is always the issue of the report’s reliability. We have no idea how accurate the numbers are, or the level of consistency in recording the data. One interesting observation is that while the police are reporting seventy-eight murders through October of this year, our own count–gleaned from daily police press releases–stands at only seventy. One category where there is little room for argument–and much reason to cheer–is that of traffic fatalities. After descending from a high of seventy-seven in 2002, the number of deaths dropped to fifty-seven in 2005 and this year could actually fall below forty.