Isle crime rate
down 2.1%But while Oahu property crime
drops 6.4%, violent offenses
increase statewide
A drop in Oahu property crime was the one bright spot in the state's overall crime report for the first six months of 2003, when violent offenses statewide surged nearly 11 percent.
The state attorney general's semiannual Uniform Crime Report, released yesterday, showed that overall crimes statewide fell 2.1 percent compared with the same period last year. However, that was mostly attributable to a 6.4 percent drop in Oahu's property crime, which accounts for the majority of the state's crime statistics.
In all other counties -- Maui, Kauai and Hawaii -- property and violent crimes increased, according to the report.
"The good news is that there was a net decrease of 2.1 percent statewide for the first half of this year," said Paul Perrone, head of research and statistics for the attorney general's office. "The bad news is that the decrease is wholly attributable to a property crime decrease on Oahu. Everything else in the state went up."
"Property crime in the City and County of Honolulu is where the big numbers are and where we traditionally struggle," Perrone said. "Hence it's where relief is most needed and welcome."
Statewide, violent crimes increased 10.9 percent, with a 13.3 percent increase in robbery, an 11.7 percent increase in assault and a 1.6 percent increase in rape. The only decrease in that category was murders. There were 11 murders in the first half of 2003, down 8.3 percent from 12 in the same period last year.
For the first six months of this year, there were 24,749 property crimes reported on Oahu, more than the total number of property and violent crimes reported in all other counties.
The 6.4 percent decrease in Oahu property crime includes a 9.7 percent drop in burglaries and an 8.7 percent drop in thefts.
Motor vehicle thefts on Oahu remain a problem, however, rising 8.2 percent from the first six months of last year.
Overall, however, HPD officials said they were pleased that their war on property crime had some success earlier this year.
"We hope it will carry out through the rest of the year," said Assistant Chief Robert Prasser, of HPD's Executive Bureau. "We've done our best to identify our more active criminals to the prosecutor's office, and as a result we're able to get the prosecutor to go for immediate charges and get them through the justice system faster."
While property crime went down on Oahu, violent crime went up 7.5 percent.
In Maui County, which includes Molokai and Lanai, violent crimes went up 15.1 percent while property crimes went up 13.6 percent.
Hawaii County's violent crime rate rose 22.5 percent while its property crime rate climbed 6.3 percent. Kauai County's violent crime jumped 35.4 percent while property crime rose 1.9 percent.
Thanks to the drop in the property crime rate on Oahu, such crimes across the state declined 2.7 percent. Burglary showed the largest drop at 7.4 percent. The statewide theft rate also went down, by 3.6 percent. Motor vehicle thefts, however, went up with a statewide increase of 8.5 percent.
Perrone said one statistic that stands out is juvenile arrests for both serious violent and property crimes, which have shown a steady decrease for the last six years. For the first half of this year, juvenile arrests fell 9.1 percent statewide when compared with the same period last year.
"It's tremendous," Perrone said. "I've never seen anything go up or down this much over a sustained period."
