Philadelphia Inquirer
Monday, May 18, 1998

Crime fell, but so did Phila. rank

FBI data showed a 2 percent drop in violent crime, but other cities saw greater declines.

By Craig R. McCoy, Mark Fazlollah and Clea Benson,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
Inquirer staff writer Thomas J. Gibbons Jr., staff graphic artist Matthew Ericson and news researcher Alletta Bowers contributed to this article.

Robberies in Philadelphia dropped 9 percent last year, but a late-year surge in burglaries, thefts and stolen cars left the city with a 2 percent overall fall in reported major crimes, the FBI said yesterday.

With crime in other big cities declining more rapidly, Philadelphia slipped from being the third-safest to the fourth among America's 10 largest cities. It traded places with Los Angeles, which led the big cities with a 13 percent fall in overall reported crime.

``The numbers are what the numbers are,'' said Police Commissioner John F. Timoney. ``I will be working against those numbers this year, and hopefully we're going to drive crime down some more. Hopefully next year, we'll assume our rightful position as No. 3, and hopefully even higher, No. 2.''

While reported crime in Philadelphia did fall slightly, the FBI statistics left little doubt that Timoney, who took over from Richard Neal in March, has plenty of work to do - especially in continuing to attack the number of robberies.

Even with the big drop in 1997, the city still has the third-highest robbery rate of the top 10 cities, with an unusually high share of those at gunpoint.

The city also had the third-highest murder rate among the big cities, although figures so far in 1998 have shown a big drop in homicide.

``Obviously, I am very concerned with the homicide rates, the shootings, aggravated assaults,'' Timoney said. ``I will also come up with strategies for robberies and burglaries and stolen cars. They're all very important, and we will come up with an individual strategies for all those crimes.''

Another big area where Timoney can look is the 22,000 car break-ins last year, which accounted for about 24 percent of the 92,590 reported major crimes in the city. The outright thefts of cars - 20,000 last year - accounted for another 22 percent of all crime.

Meanwhile, Timoney's old employer, New York City, continued to blaze the way in crime reduction. It had another big crime reduction, the second-greatest after L.A.'s, and once again had the lowest rate of reported major crime of the top 10 cities.

The FBI statistics released yesterday, called the Uniform Crime Report, measured seven major crimes - murder, rape, robbery, burglary, assault, theft and car theft.

The most welcome news for Philadelphia residents was the skid in robbery. The total number of robberies - 11,938 - was the lowest in four years. Still, only Detroit and Chicago had higher robbery rates last year among the big cities.

Philadelphia Police Capt. John McGinnis, head of the city's Major Crimes Unit, said the decline in robberies may be due to tougher courts imprisoning more robbers.

Other crimes stayed generally close to 1996 levels. Murder, theft and car theft fell slightly for the year, while rapes and burglaries rose just as slightly.

For example, Roxborough and the Tioga/Hunting Park/Nicetown sections of North Philadelphia have almost identical populations. Yet the North Philadelphia area had more than 10 times as many violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault). For example, 429 people were robbed in that part of North Philadelphia last year, but only 31 people were robbed in Roxborough.

Neighborhood leaders responded to the new crime statistics cautiously.

Julie Roman, a Fairhill resident and member of the Eastern Philadelphia Organizing Project, said she is worried that many crimes do not get reported.

Still, she said, the streets in her neighborhood near Sixth and Westmoreland Streets now appear safer.

``It seems to have gotten better,'' she said. ``In fact, my neighbor's van window was open all night last night and I was surprised to still see it sitting there this morning.''

Sam Ricks, a town watch leader in the Elmwood and Eastwick areas of Southwest Philadelphia, credits police with taking some of the area's persistent criminals off the streets, but is waiting to see the results of new, smarter policing tactics such as computerized crime maps.

Police ``have to know how to pick the trees out of the forest,'' Ricks said. ``It's connect-the-dots time.''

Among the 10 largest U.S. cities, serious crime fell 5 percent, paced by sharp drops in murder and robbery - the sixth year in a row that serious crime fell.

Cities in the Northeast had the greatest regional decline in crime, 6 percent. New York, which saw reported crime fall 7 percent, had a crime rate about two-thirds that of Philadelphia. Detroit, the most crime-ridden city among the top 10, had a rate nearly double Philadelphia's.

In recent months, Mayor Rendell has spotlighted Philadelphia's severe problem with gun violence - and the new numbers bear out his worries.

Of the city's 409 murder victims last year, 82 percent were slain with a gun. And more than half of all robberies occurred at gunpoint. The percentages were almost exactly the same as in 1996.

Full comparative gun data for 1997 were not immediately available, but in 1996, Philadelphia had the highest rate of murders and robberies in which a gun was used among the top 10 cities.

This year's FBI report incorporates the city's sharply revised crime statistics for 1996. In 1997, the FBI found that the Police Department's record-keeping was faulty and ordered the city to recalculate its statistics for 1996. The city has since overhauled its counting method and the figures released yesterday, as well as a new tally for 1996, have been accepted by the FBI.

Figures for the first half of 1997, released in February, seemed to predict a dramatic fall for the entire year; they showed crime falling 9.9 percent compared to the same period a year before, with almost all categories of crime showing big declines.

The Police Department reported that property crimes plunged during the first six months of 1997 compared to the same period of 1996. That included a reported 18 percent reduction in auto thefts.

But the picture reversed itself from July to December of last year, fueled by a jump in property crime - with car thefts up 15 percent from the same time in 1996.

Police officials said they could not explain why crime shifted dramatically halfway through the year. In 1996, there was no significant difference between crime trends in the first and second halves of that year.

The latest overall figures show that the city's crime rate has remained fairly constant during the last five years. That period included a 13 percent drop in crime in 1995 that canceled previous increases.

San Diego had the lowest figure: 6 murders per 100,000 residents.

With five times Philadelphia's population, New York had just 770 homicides last year, a 22 percent drop from the year before, the biggest downward change among all 10 cities. Philadelphia has almost three times as many homicides per capita as New York.

It remains exceedingly rare to be a murder victim. In fact, the most common victim of a crime in Philadelphia is a car.

Auto thefts were down 1 percent in Philadelphia, compared to a 5 percent drop nationwide.

Half of all auto thefts in Pennsylvania are in Philadelphia. The insurance industry gives the police about $1 million a year to increase activity by Philadelphia's auto theft squad, but the results have been meager.

In other cities where the industry has provided similar grants, there have been dramatic cuts in the theft rates.

Houston, for example, had a 7 percent reduction in auto thefts in 1997 - a continuation of a long string of reductions. New York cut vehicle thefts by 14 percent last year.

Philadelphia's ability to catch auto thieves has also been disappointing. In 1992, Philadelphia police solved 15 percent of the thefts. By 1996, it had dropped to 8 percent. The 1997 clearance rate was not immediately available.

Capt. McGinnis, who also commands the auto squad, said recoveries of stolen autos had dramatically increased this year.

In the first four months of this year, the auto squad recovered $5 million worth of stolen vehicles, compared to $2 million last year.