Georgetown Crime in 2009

With the end of 2009, GM can now look back and take a look at the complete year crime statistics. While we did not experience quite the overall crime drop that the rest of the city experienced, we nonetheless shaved stats off of just about every category.

Here is how 2009 stacked up against 2008:

Overall, crime stayed about level from 2008 to 2009. It ticked down a mere 3.68%. If you were to disregard the thefts (most of which are shop-lifting and thus do not directly affect residents) the numbers are even more level, with a slight 1.62% increase from 2008 to 2009.

As for individual categories, the first thing to be said is that Georgetown saw no homicides in 2009. In fact, there haven’t been any homicides in Georgetown since Alan Senitt’s tragic murder in 2006. Regardless of whether all the other crime categories went down in 2009, had there been another homicide, this whole conversation would be significantly more somber.

As for the other numbers, thefts, assaults with a deadly weapon, stolen autos, and sexual abuse were all down. In the case of stolen auto, the numbers are down significantly. However, it still wasn’t a good year to be a car window: thefts from autos were up significantly.

Burglaries were essentially level, with an average of about seven incidences a month taking place in Georgetown.

The overall numbers appear slightly worse when viewed across a longer time period. Here are the yearly totals going back to 2006:

2009 looks pretty good when only comparing it to 2008, but it’s only about level with 2007 numbers and almost 10% higher than 2006 numbers.

Unfortunately we’re already off to a bad year for 2010, at least anecdotally. Last week an elderly woman was violently mugged outside her East Village home and just last night someone was mugged at M and Pennsylvania right in the middle of the evening rush-hour. So please be careful and keep your eyes open for any suspicious behavior.