By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
Centralia last year experienced its lowest per capita crime rate in more than 50 years, returning to a downward trend Police Chief Bob Berg says began in 2005.
The overall crime rate in Lewis County’s largest city decreased by almost one-third from the year before, although 2010 had featured a huge spike in the level of crime, according to Berg.
The chief, hired in early 2004, last week released figures compiled for the Washington State Association of Sheriff’s and Police Chiefs as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program which are forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
WASPC expects to publish its 2011 Crime in Washington report with statistics from most police agencies around the state by mid-April.
Berg called the department’s targeted work during the past year outstanding.
“Aggressive police work and incarceration of several local career criminals, coupled with support and cooperation from the community no doubt contributed to the decrease,” Berg wrote in a news release.
Centralia officers made 508 felony arrests in 2011 compared with 302 in 2010, he wrote.
Berg’s numbers show 53.16 so-called part one crimes per 1,000 residents last year.
While overall rates for both violent and property crime decreased last year, three of the measured offenses rose compared to 2010, according to Berg.
Forcible rape was up 45 percent, from 11 incidents to 16; robbery was up 14 percent, from 14 to 16; and murder went up 100 percent, from zero to one.
A premature newborn was found decapitated last March in the trailer park home of its mother, Laura L. Hickey. A murder trial for the 25-year-old woman is scheduled for next month.
The remaining part one offenses have decreased compared with 2010. They are:
• Felony assault: down 25 percent (from 69 incidents to 52)
• Burglary: down 23 percent (from 211 incidents to 163)
• Theft: down 31 percent (from 841 incidents to 579)
• Motor vehicle theft: down 9.2 percent (from 65 incidents to 59)
• Arson: down 86 percent (from 7 to 1)
The statistical probability of a Centralia resident becoming the victim of a violent crime is less than one percent and the likelihood of being the victim of a property crime is 4.8 percent (compared with 7.8 percent the year before), according to Berg.
[1]UCR rate 2004 to 2011 in Centralia / Courtesy graphic by Centralia Police Department
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For last year’s story about area crime based on WASPC’s annual report, read “Crime up in Lewis County” from Friday May 20, 2011, here [2]