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Thursday, July 18, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIOLENT CRIMES: Crime statistics see spikes

Much of increase in murders, assaults attributed to growth in Las Vegas Valley

Spikes in the number of murders, robberies and aggravated assaults fueled a nearly 18 percent jump in violent crimes in Nevada last year, according to state crime statistics released this week.

Silver State authorities also recorded a nearly 12 percent boost in the number of vehicles stolen last year, helping push the statewide property crime rate up more than 3 percent, the statistics show.

Except arson, of which there were slightly fewer instances in 2001, Nevada saw an increase of every crime recorded as part of the FBI's nationwide Uniform Crime Reporting program.

But when taking the state's booming population growth into account, the statewide crime rate rose only slightly, from 41.55 crimes per 1,000 residents in 2000 to 42.38 last year.

"The growth rate is so substantial that you're going to see the raw numbers go up," said Richard Kirkland, director of the Nevada Department of Public Safety, which collects the statistics from law enforcement agencies throughout the state and releases them publicly after they are reported to the FBI. "What I think is more important as a measuring tool is the (crime) rate."

The 18 percent increase in violent crimes measured in the 2001 report follows four years in which violent crime in the state fell or increased by less than 2 percent.

That rise was driven by a 43 percent rise in murders, a nearly 8 percent increase in robberies and a more than 28 percent leap in aggravated assaults.

The spike in murders, from 130 in 2000 to 186 last year, ended a four-year trend in which killings in the state declined each year. It was the most murders in the state since 1997, when there were 193.

The vast majority of last year's slayings were in Southern Nevada, with 137 in the Metropolitan Police Department's jurisdiction, 20 in North Las Vegas and nine in Henderson.

The Metropolitan Police Department and North Las Vegas police have said the rise in murders last year was an anomaly heavily influenced by unusual circumstances.

The Metropolitan Police Department, which polices the city of Las Vegas and a giant swath of unincorporated Clark County, measured a 44 percent increase from 90 murders in 2000.

But the 2000 number represented a 10-year low, police said, and the 2001 total closely reflects statistics measured during most of the 1990s.

Lt. Tom Monahan, commander of the department's homicide unit, also pointed out in an interview last month that while the number of murders dramatically increased last year, the per capita murder rate has been steady over the past several years when the Las Vegas Valley's continual population boom is taken into account.

The North Las Vegas Police Department investigated 20 murders in 2001, twice the number of the year prior.

But police there attributed the majority of those slayings to a war between rival gangs battling for drug-selling turf, a conflict that police say has become less deadly.

"Crime is cyclic, and if it keeps going up, we'll pump more money into fighting it," said North Las Vegas Police Chief Mark Paresi, who took over as head of the department last month.

Paresi also said he hopes to further quell gang-related violence by rolling out new strategies to deal with gang members in the next 45 days. He declined to elaborate, saying doing so would compromise the effort.

The state report also found that law enforcement agencies across the state cleared about 25 percent of crimes reported to police. A crime is cleared when a suspect is arrested, or when circumstances make an arrest impossible, such as a suspect dying.

Nationwide, law enforcement agencies average a clearance rate of about 20 percent.

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS

Highlights from the "2001 Crime and Justice in Nevada" report released this week by the state Department of Public Safety:

	2000	2001	Percent increase or decrease
Violent crimes	10,476	12,338	17.8 percent INCREASE
Murder	130	186	43.1 percent INCREASE
Rape	860	883	0.03 percent INCREASE
Robbery	4,543	4,932	7.9 percent INCREASE
Aggravated assault	4,943	6,337	28.2 percent INCREASE
Property crimes	75,404	78,021	3.5 percent INCREASE
Burglary	17,526	17,710	1.0 percent INCREASE
Larceny	44,125	45,072	2.1 percent INCREASE
Vehicle theft	13,172	14,703	11.6 percent INCREASE
Arson	581	536	7.7 percent DECREASE
Total	85,880	90,359	5.2 percent INCREASE

SOURCE: Department of Public Safety