In some places, it's rare to hear "crime" and "good news" spoken in the same breath. Not, apparently, in Baltimore County.
For 13 years, county officials have been able to point to steady, if not always huge, declines in most acts of crime. That's something to crow about, and the county executive, James T. Smith Jr., wasted no time Tuesday in doing just that, proclaiming "impressive drops" in most so-called serious crimes in the first six months of this year, compared with the corresponding period in 2008.
Seven of the eight major crime categories - rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and arson - showed declines, Smith said at a news conference in Towson. By the end of June, there were 2,274 violent crimes in the county, 6.2 percent fewer than in the first half of last year.
"Equally important, our police have been able to maintain some of the highest clearance rates in the nation, rates that are well above the FBI's national average," Smith said.
The only category that showed a slight increase was homicides, partly because of the killing of two family members in a Towson hotel by William Parente and his subsequent suicide in April.
As of the end of June, Smith said, the Police Department achieved a 75.9 percent clearance rate for violent crimes, 30.8 percent higher than the national rate of cases solved that was recorded at the end of 2008. This includes an 88.9 percent clearance rate for murder investigations, 25 percent above the national average. The county also had a 33.6 percent clearance rate for property crimes, versus 17.4 percent nationwide. Baltimore County Police Chief James W. Johnson said violent crime in the county has been reduced to 1976 levels, much of it with the help of new technology such as computerized data searches, closed-circuit television and DNA banks.
"The stuff you see on TV that we're all fascinated with?" he said. "It works."
