Serious felony crime was down in August this year, according to the Kaua’i County Police Department. The monthly report for so-called Part 1 crimes (murder, non-negligent homicide, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft) showed
Serious felony crime was down in August this year, according to the Kaua’i County Police Department.
The monthly report for so-called Part 1 crimes (murder, non-negligent homicide, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft) showed a significant drop from August in the past two summers. There were 173 of the crimes reported last month, compared to 247 in August 2000 and 185 in August 1999.
The decrease averaged 2.5 per day from last year.
A breakdown of the crimes last month shows the drop was across the board, according to inspector Mel Morris.
Murder dropped from 1 to none, and aggravated assault from 11 to.
But the biggest downturns occurred in serious property crimes. Burglaries decreased from 56 to 36, while larceny/theft (including car break-ins and shoplifting) dropped from 166 to 121.
Morris could offer no exact cause for the drop in crime.
“I don’t know. Some of it is better police work, more cases are being solved,” including “quite a few” of the burglary cases, he said.
Mooris attributed some of the drop in theft and burglary to the fact that recently arrested burglars aren’t out performing their crime specialties.
Morris said the drop in larceny and auto theft is especially significant since many of those crimes are committed by people looking for drug money.
But he pointed out that those crimes went down even though use of methamphetamine, which rose last year, hasn’t dropped off significantly.
“I’m going to be very interested in September’s crime trends” in possible connection with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Crime dropped there for a couple of weeks after the Sept. 11 incident, Morris noted.
County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Soong said the island’s crime scene is “a whole lot quieter” so far this year, and he hopes it’s police are catching more criminals and prosecutors and judges “are getting more of them out of the community.”
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and mailto:dwilken@pulitzer.net
