Berkely, California experiences decrease in violent crime
For the second year in a row, Berkeley, California has become a safer place to live, as violent crimes have decreased, according to the Daily Californian.
The Berkeley Police Department reports diminishing rates in part-one, or violent crimes. From June 2009 to June 2010 the percent of part-one crimes, including homicide, larceny, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and auto-theft, dropped by about 21 percent, according to data provided by the BPD.
Councilman Darryl Moore attributes the decline to the BPD's direction under Police Chief Michael Meehan, the media outlet reports. Other opinions on less occurrences of crime say that reasons behind the drop are yet to be determined, according to the newspaper.
"There are times in which crime analysts, leaders of police departments, criminology or social anthropologists can assert theories as to what accounts for certain crime trends," Sergeant Mary Kusmiss of the Berkeley Police Department told the news source. "Sometimes there are direct impacts, while at other times, it is a challenge to determine a viable explanation for the trend."
Figures provided by the FBI in their Uniform Crime Report show that, as a whole, nationwide crime decreased by 5.5 percent between 2009 and 2010.
