THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 6, 1996 TAG: 9605060063
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Serious crime fell for the fourth year in a row in 1995, with murder dropping a remarkable 8 percent - the third-sharpest one-year decline in more than 30 years.
America's largest cities led the way, recording steep reductions in all categories of violent crime, according to an FBI report released Sunday. Experts credit more effective police tactics and the maturation of once-violent drug markets with contributing to the good news.
But there's bad news, too, scholars warn: While overall crime is going down, crime among teens - particularly violent crime - has been rising sharply. With the number of teens due to increase over the next decade, experts say, the nation soon may see an explosion of juvenile violence to rival the drug-driven carnage of the late 1980s.
``This is the calm before the crime storm,'' said James Alan Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston. ``It's great that crime is down now, but if we start celebrating our successes, we may be blindsided by a bloodbath.''
The new report, the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report, reflects the number of incidents reported to police agencies in eight major crime categories. Its results are preliminary and do not allow an analysis of trends among juveniles in 1995.
But, for the moment at least, the report does allow Americans everywhere the chance for a small sigh of relief.
Nationally, the report shows serious crime fell 2 percent last year, with property crimes down 1 percent and violent crimes down 4 percent.
Crime fell in every category except theft and in every region of the country, dropping most sharply - 4 percent - in the Northeast. The Midwest saw a 2 percent decline; the South and West recorded 1 percent reductions.
Murder declined most dramatically, falling 8 percent to about 21,400 murders for 1995, down from a peak of about 24,700 murders in 1991, according to FBI statistics.
Since the FBI began keeping complete records in 1960, only two years have seen sharper drops in murder: 1983, when the number fell 8.1 percent, and 1976, when it fell 8.4 percent.
Some experts were reluctant to read too much into the fact that the nation was substantially less lethal last year.
Howard Snyder, director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh, noted that the number of murders in America has hovered around 20,000 since about 1975.
``Over the last 20 years, nothing has really happened. There's never been any really big change,'' said Snyder, who analyzes juvenile crime for the U.S. Justice Department. ``Things go up and then they tend to come back down, like a swing.''
Other experts agreed that the drop probably represents a simple leveling off of murder rates in major cities, where murder skyrocketed during rapid expansion of crack cocaine in the late 1980s.
Indeed, just five big cities - New York, Houston, Chicago, San Antonio, New Orleans and Detroit - accounted for nearly 40 percent of the total reduction in murders last year.
In the nine cities with more than 1 million residents, murder and robbery both dropped 12 percent, with all violent crimes declining by 8 percent.
In suburban areas, murder dropped 10 percent. In smaller cities, it dropped just 3 percent. And in rural counties, murder was down only 1 percent.
Despite declining numbers of murders, the usual suspects made the list of the top five most murderous U.S. cities. New Orleans retained the title of murder capital for the third straight year, even though its homicide rate declined. Rounding out the top five in number of murders in proportion to population: Washington, D.C., Richmond, St. Louis and Detroit.
But a number of other cities bucked the national trend, recording enormous increases in their homicide rates. At the top of the list: Oklahoma City, which rocketed into the top 10 after the bombing of a federal building last April left more than 140 people dead. According to the FBI, murder in Oklahoma City jumped 250 percent, from 65 killings in 1994 to 227 last year.
Other cities that moved into the top 25: Philadelphia, which recorded the 24th-highest murder rate as homicides there climbed about 7 percent. Also, Minneapolis, which jumped from number 78 to number 25 as killings increased 56 percent.
Looking at all categories of crime, four of the five safest cities in 1995 were in California: Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Sunnyvale and Santa Clarita. Livonia, Mich., came in fifth.
KEYWORDS: MURDER RATE by CNB