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The Montgomery County Police Department has released their 2006 year-end crime statistics. C. Benjamin Ford reports in the Gazette:

While the number of murders and rapes declined last year, the county’s overall crime rate increased 6.1 percent, pushed up in large part by a nearly 13 percent rise in robberies.

But while violent crimes reported to police were down, robberies, felony thefts, burglaries all increased, with the biggest jump in robberies. There were 1,166 robberies in 2006 compared to 1,035 the year before — a 12.7 percent increase.

Police also recorded a nearly 6.1 percent increase in less serious crimes, such as misdemeanor theft, embezzlement, bad checks and other offenses — crimes often referred to as ‘‘quality-of-life” offenses because of how they affect neighborhoods and communities.

‘‘There are social and economic factors tied to [these crimes],” Manger said. ‘‘Any kind of theft has some economic factor to them. Most people wouldn’t steal if they didn’t need the money.”

Also, The Frederick News-Post reports:

Manger said six murders were directly related to domestic disputes. Eighty percent of the victims knew their killers. Strangers were responsible for two deaths. Twelve of the 15 homicide cases have been closed. Five homicides occurred in the Germantown district and none in Gaithersburg.

That last sentence, I’m thinking, is a mis-read of the report. Actually, in 2006, there were five murders in District 6 (Montgomery Village/Gaithersburg) and none in District 5 (Germantown and the northern and western parts of the county, including Poolsville and Damascus). One of these murders was in Olde Towne and another at Lakeforest Mall. In 2005, the situation was flipped: there were five murders in District 5 and none in District 6. The order of the columns in the report can make it a bit confusing.

Below, I’ve copied in the numbers for District 6, and combined them with the figures reported by the Gaithersburg Police a couple of weeks ago. Since, as far as I know (someone please correct me if I’m wrong about this), Gaithersburg is completely within District 6 and the District 6 figures include Gaithersburg’s, it’s possible to do the math and see the statistics for the parts of District 6 that aren’t in Gaithersburg — District 6 extends to Brink, Woodfield and Fieldcrest Roads on the north, Shady Grove and Muncaster Roads on the east, Darnestown Road on the south and the far side of Seneca State Park on the west. Rape, Burglary and Larceny are up more in the non-Gaithersburg portions of the District, while Robbery and Aggravated assault went down less in Gaithersburg than outside the City. Auto thefts are up dramatically throughout the District, although more so within the City than in the remainder of the District.

It is worth noting, I think, that the number of robberies — which took a major jump in most districts — fell significantly in District 6, including within the Gaithersburg city limits. Germantown led the county with a 25.6% increase in robberies, with Rockville at 23.1% and Silver Spring with a 19.6% increase. It should also be noted, however, that the District 6 robbery count is the third highest (of six) in the County, after Silver Spring and Wheaton. Moreover, District 6 in 2006 had the second-highest incidence of Part I crimes, behind only Silver Spring. (Part I crimes are the ones that are further broken out in the table — Murder, Rape, Robbery, Theft, etc.). Adjusted for population using the numbers obtained around the time of the release of the 2nd quarter statistics, it turns out that District 6 leads the County in per-capita Part I crime. Update Within the City of Gaithersburg it is even worse — Using the City Police figure of 2527 Part I crimes in 2006, and a 2003 Census figure of 57,365 residents, it comes out that the City of Gaithersburg had 44 Part I crimes per thousand residents in 2006.

Update 2 (Alvarez link):MoCo Progressive also has some thoughts on the latest statistics, and also has some disturbing news regarding the punishment criminals can expect in this county — Oscar Lemus-Alvarez, who was arrested for the stabbing incident at Gaithersburg High School last November, received probation before judgement, which essentially means that as long as he behaves himself for a little while, it will be as if the stabbing never happened.

Update 3, 4: I will add another table later, but I calculated out the per-thousand-resident statistics for all ten crime categories in the report, for all six districts plus the City of Gaithersburg. The summary, though, is that Gaithersburg has the highest per-capita rates of Part I, Part II and (of course) total crime. It also has the highest rates of larceny, burglary, and aggravated assault. Silver Spring has the highest rates of robbery and auto theft, while District 6 as a whole has the highest rates of murder and rape. Gaithersburg comes in second for everything that it doesn’t come in first.

I will point out that using the Gaithersburg numbers is just a bit misleading, because it amounts to pulling a very densely-populated portion of one of the districts, and looking at the crime in that core area. Gaithersburg is just ten square miles, while Montgomery County is about five hundred square miles. It is entirely likely that one could pick another ten-square-mile section of Montgomery County (probably out of the Silver Spring district) such that the per-capita numbers are worse than Gaithersburg’s, but we’ll never see that because (a) that area won’t be incorporated and thus (b) those statistics won’t be calculated and/or published. Nevertheless, these numbers do tend to be supportive of the perception many have that crime in Gaithersburg is worse than in many other parts of the County.