North Carolina Attorney General Cooper Concerned About Violent Crime Rate
By admin - Posted on June 4th, 2008
June 3, 2007 -- Raleigh -- Reports of crime across North Carolina rose by 0.1 percent in 2007 while violent crime dropped by 0.7 percent, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper announced today.
“While no level of crime is acceptable, law enforcement’s work to keep the rate of violent crime down is much needed,” Cooper said. “But as any cop on the beat will tell you, when the economy goes down, crime goes up, and we’re troubled to see even a small increase in North Carolina’s overall crime rate."
The overall rate of index crime per 100,000 persons in North Carolina increased 0.1 percent compared to 2006.
The rate of violent crime per 100,000 North Carolinians dropped 0.7 percent according to reports submitted to the State Bureau of Investigation from law enforcement agencies across the state. Rates rose in one violent crime category—murder— by 8.5 percent. Rates for three other violent crime categories fell, with rapes down 5.2 percent, robberies down 0.4 percent, and aggravated assaults down 0.6 percent.
The rate of property crimes—burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft—increased by 0.2 percent statewide.
Reports of larceny rose 1.5 percent, while reports of burglary dropped 0.2 percent and reports of motor vehicle theft fell 8.7 percent. Adult arrests for reported offenses declined 4 percent, while juvenile arrests for those crimes were down 3 percent.
Despite the slight rise in the crime rate for 2007, North Carolina’s overall reported crime rate has fallen nearly 15 percent in the past 10 years. The rate of property crime is down nearly 14 percent compared to a decade ago, and the rate of violent crime has dropped nearly 20 percent in the same period. This decrease in the crime rate has come during a time when the state’s population has grown by 19.1 percent.
“We cannot rest on our long-term record of falling crime rates,” Cooper said. “We must keep pushing for tougher sentences and better technology so law enforcement and prosecutors can stay ahead of the criminals."
To help law enforcement catch more lawbreakers, Cooper has established an SBI Triad Regional Crime Lab set to open in Greensboro this month. The new lab means local law enforcement in the Triad area will have nearby access to expert analysis of crime scene evidence.
Expansions in recent years at the main SBI Crime Lab in Raleigh and the Western Regional Crime Lab in Asheville are also helping law enforcement from across the state use science and technology to solve more crimes. For example, Cooper worked with legislators to quadruple the number of DNA analysts and take DNA samples from all convicted felons. Thanks to those efforts, the Crime Lab used DNA to help law enforcement catch more murderers, rapists and other criminals in just the first six months of 2007 than in the entire first decade of North Carolina’s DNA program.
Cooper is asking legislators for more firearms experts for the Crime Lab as well as additional SBI field agents to help investigate crimes from murders and drug rings to public corruption and online predators. He’s also fighting a $100,000 cut in lab equipment proposed in the state budget. Those funds are needed for new workstations to process blood drug samples quickly, new gas chromatographs that could halve the time it takes to run blood alcohol samples in DWI cases, and new microscopes to compare firearms used in murders and gang-related shootings.
“Law enforcement tells us that the rise in reported crimes mirrors rising drug and gang activity in our communities,” said Cooper. “Every day it seems we hear about gangs and the violence they cause, from our big cities to our small towns."
A recent report by the Governor’s Crime Commission estimates that there are 14,500 gang members in North Carolina and that 82 percent of the state’s jurisdictions have gang related activity. Cooper is pushing for tougher laws to fight gang crime and more funding for programs to keep kids out of gangs. The Attorney General backs legislation that would make it a crime to solicit someone to join a gang or threaten them for quitting a gang.
The North Carolina Uniform Crime Reporting Program is part of a nationwide effort administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Calculations for crime rates used population data from the NC Office of State Budget, Planning and Management. For more information about 2007 crime statistics, go to www.ncdoj.gov.
Click “Crime and Law Enforcement,” then “Crime Statistics.” To view or print a summary of 2007 crime statistics, click “2007 Annual Summary Report.” See “Offenses and Clearances by Agency” for other statistics broken down by region.
Source: North Carolina Attorney General
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