Washington streets were safer in 2009 than in 2008, following a national trend of declining violent crime, according to a preliminary FBI crime report released Monday.
The District’s reported 7.2 percent drop in violent crime in 2009 from 2008 neatly matches reports released by Maryland and Virginia earlier this month that also noted dropping crime levels.
The FBI preliminary report did not break statistics down by state, only by cities with more than 100,000 people and by region. The full report will be out this fall. The FBI collects its data from more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.
But the Virginia state police reported that the commonwealth’s violent crime dropped 9.7 percent in 2009 from 2008. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said violent crime in his state was down to levels not seen since 1975, a trend led in large part by Prince George’s County where the number of murders dropped to the lowest in decades.
The number of murders in the District also fell from 186 to 143, according to the FBI’s report. The number of rapes in the District dropped from 186 to 150.
The report’s finding that violent crime nationwide dropped by 5.5 percent in 2009 marks the third consecutive annual decrease. And despite the declining economy, crime against property — theft and burglary — dropped by 4.9 percent nationally from 2008 to 2009, the seventh year in a row that property crime has gone down.
Law enforcement officials had expected the dropping crime levels to slow or stop when the economy spiraled into recession. But that hasn’t been the case nationally and officials believe new technology and a focus on community policing are the reasons behind the trend.
