BY WILLIAM A. WEATHERS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Crime statistics for 1997 in Cincinnati and Hamilton County mirror the nationwide decrease in major crimes reported Sunday by the FBI.
"What's happening, quite frankly, is that the bad guys are in jail," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said Sunday. "The states have got these tough sentencing statutes."
Mr. Deters said 6 percent of criminals commit 70 percent of the crimes.
"If you identify the bad guys and lock them up as long as possible, crime rates drop," the prosector said.
Community involvement was cited as a major factor for the drop in major crime locally by spokesmen for the Cincinnati Police Division and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department.
In Cincinnati, serious crime - defined as murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft - dropped 5 percent in 1997 compared to the previous year. The decrease occurred despite a 25 percent increase in murders in Cincinnati. The city had 40 homicides in 1997, compared with 32 in 1996.
"There has been a heavy emphasis on community cooperation," police spokesman Lt. Tim Schoch said earlier this year of the 1997 city statistics.
In Hamilton County, major crimes such as murder, rape and burglary also declined 5 percent in 1997, the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department reported.
The county's annual crime report includes statistics from Anderson, Colerain, Columbia, Crosby, Green, Harrison, Miami, Sycamore, Symmes and Whitewater townships and the village of North Bend.
"We'd like to feel that the continuing and expanded efforts at cooperation between citizens and sheriff's office, in programs such as Neighborhood Watch and various crime-prevention activities, are the basis for this progress," Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. said when the Hamilton County crime statistics were released earlier this year.
The FBI figures show major crimes decreased 3 percent from 1996, based on statistics supplied by 17,000 police agencies around the nation.
