THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 24, 1995 TAG: 9504240036
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
For the first time since 1987, the violent crime rate in Hampton Roads declined last year - but some experts suggest the figures represent a calm before the storm.
The regional rate fell by 2.4 percent, representing slightly fewer violent crimes per capita than occurred during the previous year - when a record high was set.
Experts in crime statistics are skeptical that the drop signals a long-term trend. They point to an increasing number of teenagers in the population, a demographic shift that may result in higher crime rates.
Newport News, Norfolk and Hampton led the way in 1994 toward a safer society. All had double-digit reductions in their violent crime rates. Officials in Hampton and Norfolk credited community policing, including neighborhood watch programs, for the reduction.
Hampton Police Chief Pat Minetti said, for instance, that the Hampton Neighborhood Watch program involves 30,000 households, making it the largest such program per capita in the state.
``When each person in the community feels connected and comes forward and helps with strategies, that helps immensely,'' Minetti said. ``Plus we have a lot of police officers who are doing a hell of a good job.''
Although Hampton Roads as a whole experienced a drop in the violent crime rate, Suffolk, Chesapeake and Portsmouth hit highs last year, showing increases in the violent crime rate.
But Portsmouth's increase was small - less than 1 percent.
In Virginia Beach, the region's most populous city, the rate dropped 7 percent.
The FBI reports the violent crime rate, which includes all murders, rapes aggravated assaults and robberies, annually.
The rate does not include property crimes, such as burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft.
All seven felonies in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report - including property crimes and violent crimes - showed a big drop during the past five years in Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Chesapeake. But until 1994, the violent crime rate worsened in almost every area city.
The last decline in the region's violent crime rate occurred in 1987. Since then, it has increased each year, setting a record in 1990 and breaking it every year since.
But Richard Kern, director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission and director of Virginia's criminal justice research center, said last week that 1994's reduction is more likely a ``little temporary correction factor.'' He projects an increase in violent crime in Virginia through the year 2005.
``There are things tugging at the social fabric of our society that are generating a new breed of violence among our kids.'' Kern told legislators in 1993.
``One year does not necessarily make a turnaround,'' agreed Alfred Blumstein, a criminal statistics expert at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Blumstein said the Hampton Roads figures, instead of representing a real shift, are more likely ``reasonable fluctuations around a fairly constant rate.''
Maintaining any decrease, he said, will be difficult because the number of teenagers in this country is expected to increase significantly in the next decade. ``That will be exacerbated by a large number of young people growing up in home situations that make them vulnerable,'' he said.
Economically stressed homes absent of fathers, he said, create an environment that makes violent behavior almost impossible to avoid.
Easy access for the young people to both guns and drugs also makes Blumstein pessimistic.
``Juveniles carrying guns,'' he said, ``is a dangerous combination.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff graphic by Janet Shaughnessy
Good News: Violent Crime Declines in Hampton Roads
Violent Crime Rate
All crime rate
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Statistics
For copy of graphic, see microfilm
KEYWORDS: CRIME RATE HAMPTON ROADS CRIME STATISTICS DECREASE by CNB