FBI report shows crime rate falling as population grows

Keith Paul

Thursday, May 11, 2000 | 10:31 a.m.

The amount of crime in Las Vegas continued to fall last year -- even as the area population increases each month -- following the nationwide trend for most of the 1990s, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report.

Metro Police reported a decrease in six of seven crime categories the FBI tracks -- murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft. But the number of rapes in 1999 increased to 532 from 501 in 1998, a 6.2 percent jump, according to the FBI preliminary crime report.

Murder in Metro's jurisdiction fell by 6 percent in 1999 from 1998 with robbery decreasing by 5.2 percent, auto theft by 4.6 percent, theft by 10.7 percent and burglary by 11.4 percent.

The largest drop was in aggravated assault, which tumbled by 24.5 percent in 1999 from 1998, according to the FBI data.

"We're very pleased that the crime rate continues to go down," Officer Steve Meriwether, a Metro spokesman, said. "To the individual that is a victim of a crime, the decreasing crime rate doesn't mean a thing, but we certainly see that the probability that someone will become a victim going down as a positive sign."

Residents shouldn't take the decrease in crime numbers as an indication they no longer need to be aware of their surroundings or take crime prevention measures. Meriwether said residents taking an active participation in crime prevention is one of the reasons for the years-long trend of lower crime numbers.

The falling crime rates recently in major cities across the country are mostly the undoing of surging crime that started in the early 1980s, said Alfred Blumstein, director of the National Consortium on Violence Research at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

While falling crime rates sometimes can make residents feel better about their community, the high volume of media exposure for violent episodes like the Columbine school shooting or a rampage by someone at a workplace can have an adverse effect on residents' sense of safety, Blumstein said.

"If two kids in a gang shoot at each other, people living in the suburbs can feel some distance from that, but when something like a school shooting occurs, the randomness of the event can affect fear of violence," he said.

But Blumstein said Las Vegans should take some solace in the lower numbers and not try and compare the city to any other like-size jurisdictions because of the tourist populations and the fast growth of the area.

"The probability of violent crime is lower and you should be happy about that," he said.

Information for the Uniform Crime Report is gathered by the FBI from police departments nationwide. The statistics include only the crimes reported to police and forwarded to the FBI.

Keith Paul covers crime and public safety for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4057 or by e-mail at keith@lasvegassun.com