THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, December 23, 1994              TAG: 9412230514
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                     LENGTH: Medium:   61 lines

VIRGINIA BEACH IS THE SAFEST U.S. CITY OF ITS SIZE THE 1993 REPORT USES FBI RANKINGS OF CRIMES RANGING FROM MURDER TO ARSON.

For the seventh year in a row, the city can claim to be the safest of its size in the nation.

Virginia Beach recorded the lowest crime rate among cities with populations between 200,000 and 700,000. The group includes Atlanta, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Raleigh, Richmond and Norfolk.

Police Chief Charles R. Wall relayed the ranking, which is based on 1993 statistics, to City Manager James K. Spore in an internal memo last week.

The yardstick for the ranking is the FBI's Uniform Crime Index, which lists Part I crimes.

Part I crimes - murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft and arson - are the standard ones each locality reports several times a year to the FBI.

The crime rate is figured by comparing a city's population with the number of crimes committed. The nation's crime statistics were released earlier this month.

Virginia Beach, with a population of 423,387, reported 20,716 Part I crimes in 1993. That means the city's crime rate was 48.9 crimes per 1,000 residents.

Norfolk, the only other Hampton Roads city in the same population category as Virginia Beach, recorded 86.7 crimes per 1,000 residents.

Norfolk's violent crime rate - which includes all reported murders, rapes, robberies and assaults - was nearly four times Virginia Beach's violent-crime rate of 2.9 per 1,000 citizens.

This year in Virginia Beach, however, one Part I crime has dramatically increased - murder.

Last year, 25 people were murdered in Virginia Beach. As of Thursday afternoon, 35 people had been killed this year. That is six more than the city's previous record of 29, set in 1991.

The murder numbers jumped this year partly because of two quadruple homicides in the summer. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

CRIME RATES

Here are crime rates, or number of crimes per 1,000 residents,

for Hampton Roads cities and some comparable cities:

Chesapeake 47.1

Virginia Beach 48.9

Hampton 55.8

Newport News 68.3

Norfolk 86.7

Portsmouth 89.4

Charlotte 118.5

Indianapolis 89.4

Richmond 108.6

Raleigh 68.2

KEYWORDS: CRIME STATISTICS TIDEWATER by CNB