State, counties see drops in crime during 2007

Last year, a crime took place on average once every 69 seconds in Illinois.

A violent crime took place once every 7 minutes, 29 seconds. A property crime occurred every 82 seconds and a murder once every 11 hours, 39 minutes, on average.

Combined with other 2007 crime statistics, that translates to an average of 1,250 crimes each day or 456,085 total statewide for all of 2007.

The numbers sound troubling, but they actually reflect a 3.6 percent decline overall in the Illinois crime rate (calculated as crimes per 100,000 people) from 2006, according to an Illinois State Police report issued Wednesday.

The findings are based on statistics compiled by the Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting Program on murder, criminal sexual assault, robbery, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and arson committed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2007. Statistics for 2008 won't be available until next year.

State officials said the report gives citizens and law enforcement agencies a quick snapshot of the crime activity in their communities. It's good data for police departments to have when allocating resources for the future, Illinois State Police Lt. Luis Gutierrez said.

"If you as an agency see that you're up in one type of crime, or down in another, you can make sure you set aside the resources to address that," he said.

Still, some law enforcement officials say the stats should be viewed with caution.

"There are so many things that can affect how many incidents you have in a given year," Rolling Meadows police Sgt. Tony Gaspari said. "To give one example: transients. One year, you might have more people from outside your town committing crimes and then moving on. It's tough for a police department to control that."

At the county level in the Chicago metropolitan region, Kane County reported the biggest decrease in crime with an 8.3 percent drop in crimes per 100,000 people. Cook County reported a 2.9 percent decrease, with Lake, DuPage and McHenry counties also reporting drops.

Locally, many communities reported a decrease in crimes, with some of the drops in the double-digits.

Carpentersville, for example, reported a decrease of 24.2 percent in crimes per 100,000 people. Carpentersville police Commander Tim Bosshart attributes the drop to the department's efforts targeting area street gangs with help from the FBI.

Their combined efforts "pretty much dismantled their (the gang's) upper echelon," he said.

This year's report took longer than usual to compile because of the logistics involved in getting the information entered and verified, Gutierrez said. In previous years, the states came out in August or September. "It's a big job, but we hope to get it done sooner next year," he said.

Chicago-area crime stats County Population Crimes '07 Crimes '06 % change Cook (Chicago) 2,832,854 161,244 167,622 -3.8% Cook (suburbs) 2,455,801 77,653 79,034 -1.7% DeKalb 100,139 2,882 2,987 -3.5% DuPage 932,670 19,796 20,689 -4.3% Kane 493,735 12,279 13,082 -6.1% Kendall 88,158 1,882 2,059 -8.6% Lake 713,076 15,538 15,685 -0.9% McHenry 312,373 5,893 5,986 -1.6% Will 668,217 14,295 14,360 -0.5% Statewide 12,831,970 456,099 470,730 -3.1%