With the recent news about the break-ins in town, I looked around for some information on our crime statistics. This is by no means a comprehensive report! I’m just listing a few interesting tidbits I found online that might be of interest. My concluson after a few minutes of random searching is that it’s best to contact our local police department for the real numbers, as the ones that follow do not include the year in which these statistics were created. That’s a rather glaring omission, so take this stuff with a grain of salt. I just wanted to get an idea of what to expect in these coming months as the economy worsens. Now that the police force is close to 100%, we can only hope that the thieves who’ve made the news in these last few weeks will be caught quickly. Until then, it doesn’t look promising.
When I looked on www.city-data.com, I found some interesting stuff. On the Topix boards, for instance, many have been noticing roving groups of teens wandering the streets at night. While I don’t like stereotyping, it is interesting to note that this site lists the distribution of ages in the town, and the biggest group is between 10-15 years old! Some other random facts I never knew include that out of 7,372 houses and condos in town, 35% are rentals. 7 registered sex offenders live here, and 7% of our neighbors live below the poverty level. In addition, by far the highest percentage of houses in this town were built before 1939 (although this is contradicted by Trulia.com, a realtoy-based site with similar information).
When I checked out www.neighborhoodscout.com, I saw that my chances of becoming a victim of crime in Stratford was 1 in 435, compared with the overall Connecticut average of 1 in 364. That made me feel a little better until I saw that we recently had 8 rapes, 59 robberies, and 49 assaults in town. What year? Who knows—these sites do a lousy job of including this information (another reason to go straight to our police department for the real scoop).
The property crime rate was slightly higher than the CT average, 34.46 % to 25.58. That includes 296 burglaries, 1,224 thefts, and 196 motor vehicle thefts. Again, Trulia.com gives a rosier picture that only 3% of all residents will be affected by crime, so I’m not sure where this 34% comes in.
In short, it’s time to double-check your locks before you go to bed. While I’ll be checking into burglary alarm systems, some easier steps are listed on http://crimewatchstrfd.org, the award-winning web site that represents our local chapter of Crime Watch. It lists the ways in which to start a neighborhood watch group, an idea that seems even more important in light of some off the recent burglaries that could have been mitigated with more vigilant neighbors. I also saw two groups listed in Stratford on www.i-neighbors.org.
With so many people watching us to steal our stuff, maybe it’s time we watched out for each other. Read more of this observation!
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