Major crime down 11 percent
Motor vehicle theft up in first three months of year
DANBURY — Major crime is down 11 percent for the first three months of the year, according the latest monthly report by the city police department.
Crime in eight categories from arson to theft decreased in the first quarter of 2019 over the same three-month period last year.
A total of 252 major crimes were reported in the first three months of 2019, compared to 285 major crimes in the first quarter of last year.
One individual crime category to watch continues to be motor vehicle theft, which is up 53 percent over the same three-month period in 2018. Motor vehicle theft rose from
15 the first three months of 2018 to 23 in the same period in 2019, police said.
“Motor vehicle theft does continue to be a problem statewide, and some of it is attributable to juveniles,” police Chief Patrick Ridenhour said. “But we are still having problems with vehicles being left unlocked with keys or key fobs inside.”
Last year, a rise in motor vehicle thefts drove the major crime rate up 5 percent over
2017. It was an unusual year for a city often cited as one of Connecticut’s safest.
“Danbury’s crime numbers are remarkably stable, even though individual categories may go up and down,” Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said on Tuesday. “We are the safest city with a population over 60,000 in Connecticut.”
Danbury is among the state’s fastestgrowing cities, at 85,000 people.
Each month, the police department submits to the City Council the number of homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, thefts, motor vehicle thefts and arsons. The numbers are not final until they are submitted to the state at the end of the year.
The first-quarter statistics show that rape, robbery and assault were all down compared to last year during the same period. Among property crimes, theft was down substantially — from 225 theft crimes in the first three months of 2018 to 185 in the first quarter of 2019, a decrease of 18 percent.
“This is good news, but we will continue to do our best to stay on top of things,” Ridenhour said.