Attorney General Roy Cooper announced Wednesday that North Carolina’s crime rate hit a 33-year low in 2010, but warned that a climate of budget cuts and layoffs could defeat progress made in past years. In announcing a crime rate of nearly 3,956 per 100,000 people – the lowest since 1977 – Cooper said the training, personnel, technology and tactics that have helped achieve falling crime rates are imperiled by cuts to law enforcement at the state and local levels. “To keep crime rates moving down, we need better budget decisions that promote public safety, not hurt it,” he said in a statement. Specifically, Cooper pointed out that the State Bureau of Investigation will cut its budget by 9 percent and eliminate 42 positions this year, and that the Highway Patrol is facing a $20 million cut over two years, which could mean layoffs. On top of that, federal funding in areas like methamphetamine lab site cleanup has already been cut, and the state could lose more money because the General Assembly didn’t pass legislation this year to bring the state into compliance with a federal sex offender registration law.
Overall crime dropped 5.6 percent from 2009, with the violent crime rate plunging by 10.2 percent. The murder rate, 5.1 per 100,000 people, was the lowest it has been since the state started keeping records in 1973. The rates of rape and robbery also dropped sharply, with the latter seeing a reduction by nearly 20 percent. The most common offenses were property crimes, with larceny the most frequently reported overall. Crime was down across the state, with most major metropolitan areas recording a decrease except for Cary and Gaston County, which saw increases, and Asheville, which was unchanged from 2009. Five cities – Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Greenville and Rocky Mount – saw double-digit drops in crime. The decline in North Carolina parallels a drop nationwide, with the FBI reporting earlier this year that the national violent crime rate fell in 2010 by 5.5 percent, and the property crime rate by 2.8 percent.(Tom Breen, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/29/11).
