The rate of several types of violent and serious crime declined in Alexandria last year from already-low levels.
Rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults dropped by between 10 and 37 percent in 2007 from 2006 levels, according to police records.
“This goes against a national trend of rather significant increases of violent crime,” Police Chief David Baker said. “There has been a lot of focus and energy by the city concerning public safety, and a lot of work by the police department and the residents.”
The overall rate for serious crimes reached a 40-year low in 2006 after a steady 15-year decline.
Alexandria did not break its 2006 record last year because of an uptick in larcenies, most of which were thefts of GPS units and other portable electronic devices from cars, Baker said.
Those types of thefts have been growing across the city, but are most prevalent in the west end, near the Beltway and along the Arlington-Alexandria border, he said.
The city also posted a slight increase in homicides, which climbed from five to seven between 2006 and last year, record show.
Suspects have been arrested in five of those cases, and two are still being investigated, Baker said.
“Most of our homicides are people that know each other and had a beef with each other,” he said. “They’re not stranger-to-stranger incidents.”
Baker instituted a new policing system shortly after becoming police chief in September 2006.
The “strategic response system” aims to give officers more ownership of sections of the city by assigning them exclusively to that section.
“Instead of dividing our resources by time, we divided the city geographically,” Baker said. “We hold those commanders responsible for that section of the city.”
Officers also meet more frequently with the agency’s crime analysts and are responsible for using crime databases to analyze trends in their assigned areas and for suggesting policing strategies to tackle the crimes.
