Area violent crime rates level off

City robberies dropped last year from a five-year high recorded in 2005, statistics provided by county and University Police show, although burglaries - both on and off the campus - continued to plague area residents.

Statistics show burglaries on both the campus and in the City of College Park saw the most significant elevation of all categories, and on the campus the crimes reached their highest count since 2000. The drop in robberies and relative steadying of other violent crimes on or near the campus bucks a nationwide trend, however, that points to the largest surge in violent crime in 15 years.

For the city and the campus, that violent crime surge came in 2005, and police pointed to a recent buildup of police officers on the street, more contact with suspicious people and increased arrests as contributing to a downturn. Criminologists warned against drawing conclusions from a one-year trend, stressing that significant caution must be used when dealing with statistics.

"From a statistical perspective, it's always meaningless [to look at one-year changes]," said university criminology and criminal justice professor David Weisburd. "They don't give you much of a trend."

He said the most significant of the changes was the rebounding of city burglaries to 151, after they dropped dramatically to 117 in 2005.

"You can't make a hell of a lot out of the 151, but I'd like to know what happened last year," Weisburd said.

The crime statistics collected and reported by University Police and the county are early numbers that will eventually be reported to the FBI as Uniform Crime Reports. The numbers are reported yearly and are used by criminologists and police officials to analyze problem areas and trends, although usually in much larger areas than the city and the campus.

Although the FBI released Uniform Crime Report data last year showing this campus had a high number of violent crimes, those numbers were for all of 2005. These numbers are for all of last year.

For both county and University Police, street robberies have been a particular concern, and police locally have focused their efforts on them. University Police used a departmental manpower increase to create a six-officer team that focused on violent crime last year, their spokeswoman, Maj. Cathy Atwell said, and throughout the county Police District 1, where College Park lies, officials increased arrests by 38 percent and doubled suspicious person stops.

"The drop in the robberies I'm sure is attributable to staffing with the [Strategic Enforcement Response Team] and the focus on the violent crimes," Atwell said. "I can't explain why there was an increase in burglaries, although it's not unheard of. ... Sometimes when efforts are focused on reducing one area of crimes, there's an increase in other areas."

Another significant rise in crime of note was residential robberies, or home invasions, which increased from one home invasion in 2005 to a total of six last year. In three of those crimes, students were involved. One of them, police believe, was targeted because the students were known to sell drugs.

But a home invasion last month involving a suspected gambling house has raised the profile of residential robberies, especially those that police believe are targeted.

"The question for college students is, 'Am I about to put myself in a precarious situation where I can be the victim of something ... where I'm gonna get hurt and killed," said Maj. Kevin Davis, who commands Police District 1. "If I know that they're playing Texas Hold 'Em at 123 Main St. on Friday night, and there's $15,000 there, and on top of it they're a bunch of college kids who aren't gonna resist, that's where I'm going if I'm a bad guy."

Davis said he plans to increase police presence in the area, including a wider use of bicycles, and more DUI checkpoints. The county's force is the strongest in years, he added, standing at 1,597 officers, up from 1,130 just two years ago.

Home burglaries, which are classified as non-violent, climbed by 54.2 percent in the city, and on-campus, all burglaries went up by 78 percent. Although the 151 burglaries tied the six-year high in 2001, City Councilman Bob Catlin also warned against being alarmed over one-year crime increases.

"I know there have been a lot of burglaries, and the numbers could be a lot better, [but] none of the numbers really surprise me. Some of it is cyclical," said Catlin, who represents the city's Berwyn district. "Some of the numbers can change quite a bit from year to year. It's such a limited time frame."

Contact reporter Owen Praskievicz at praskieviczdbk@gmail.com.