Crime drops at record rate

Monday, June 2, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A record 7 percent drop last year in violent crimes reported to police and a fifth straight year of decline in serious offenses show that the country is developing real momentum against crime, experts say.

Record declines of 11 percent in murders and 6 percent in aggravated assaults also highlighted the FBI's release Sunday of preliminary figures for 1996.

"The tide is turning, but there's a lot more to do," said James Alan Fox, dean of criminology at Northeastern University.

Taken together, the violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault had the largest one-year decline in the 35 years since the FBI first reported year-to-year comparisons in 1961.

The far more numerous property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft and auto theft collectively dropped 3 percent.

The total of the seven serious reported crimes declined 3 percent, the largest since a 3.3 percent drop in 1982.

In Las Vegas, violent crime decreased in every category except murder, which increased by 36 percent, up from 118 in 1995 to 161 in 1996.

In Metro Police's jurisdiction, which includes the city of Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County, there were actually 168 murders in 1996 and 134 in 1995.

The discrepency in the numbers reported to the FBI was because of the way the initial crime is reported, said Phil Roland, spokesman for Metro. He said the crime statistics are taken from the initial dispatch reports. A murder could first be reported as an assault and then turn into a murder, he said. It would be the assault and not the murder that is reported to the FBI, he said.

Metro officials attributed the increase in murders last year to the valley's rapidly growing population.

In Henderson, burglaries, aggravated assaults, forcible rape and murder were on the rise. But overall, Henderson's violent crime increased just 1 percent.

"Increased crime rates can be contagious; so can decreasing crime rates. There can be momentum," Fox said. "When we're hopeless, we retreat. But when crime comes down, people feel better and safer. So they get involved with police. They get together to take charge of neighborhoods as opposed to just hiding indoors."

Professor Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University agreed: "This reflects responses by society to the dramatic growth of crime, particularly in juvenile homicide, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There is some kind of momentum."

The 145 percent surge in juvenile homicide rates in that era was driven by "a contagion -- the spread of guns ... to kids who hadn't had them before and didn't have any restraint," Blumstein said.

Along with citizen efforts, Blumstein credited police programs targeted at guns in big cities, including New York, Boston, Houston and Pittsburgh, and even in some smaller ones, like Charleston, S.C.

New York, Houston and other cities used "zero tolerance" policies allowing police to stop and frisk kids in high crime neighborhoods for public order offenses, like playing loud radios. The increased police stops made kids more wary of carrying guns.

Charleston offered a bounty for reporting guns, which Blumstein said, "limited the brandishing of guns."

"Aggressiveness in getting rid of the guns produces momentum," Blumstein said, "because kids begin to realize that if the other guy is less likely to have a gun or draw a gun, they are less likely to need one."

President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno credited their 1994 crime bill, which toughened sentences and has paid for 57,000 new local police officers in community-oriented programs, the Brady law which has thwarted tens of thousands of illegal gun sales and juvenile-crime-prevention programs.

"The downward trend over the past four years is further evidence we are on the right track with increased community policing, tougher penalties and greater juvenile crime prevention," Clinton said.

House crime subcommittee Chairman Bill McCollum, R-Fla., said, "Even with these declines, it is still nearly four times more likely that you are going to be raped, robbed, assaulted or murdered than it was in 1960.

"I don't think guns are a big factor in this. Good community policing doesn't depend on finding contraband guns but the fact that the cop knows the kids and the gangs," McCollum said. He claimed some credit for Republican incentives to build more state prisons and lock violent criminals away longer.

Academics and police chiefs also cited the huge, postwar Baby Boom generation's passage from its crime-prone years into middle age and a decline in criminal turf wars as crack cocaine markets matured.

But Dennis Nowicki, police chief in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., where murders dropped from 129 in 1993 to 74 in 1996, said, "Our greatest reductions are where there is a strong police partnership with the community."

Nowicki's officers volunteer to help citizens and teachers run 160 "Right Moves for Youth" clubs in every school in the city and county the department serves. Goals are set for each student; kids whose grades rise and behavior improves get rewards.

"We have kids who were beating up other kids and were on track for serious crime but now are on the honor roll," Nowicki said. "Parents can't always provide all the structure kids need. If we don't help now, the police will have the problem for the next 30 years" at much greater expense for investigations and prisons.