By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Helen Johnson (from left), 13; Raymond Crenshaw, 9; Mahogany Johnson, 21; and Olivia Johnson, 15, play basketball in a small park along Moosewood Street in English Woods Thursday afternoon. (Glenn Hartong photo)

MOUNT ADAMS - This neighborhood that's home to high-dollar houses and popular bars has another claim - the biggest increase last year in reports of serious crime of any Cincinnati neighborhood.

But the actual number of crimes still remains small when compared with other neighborhoods. And almost all of the Mount Adams' increase can be attributed to one thing: thefts from vehicles. The entertainment district attracts thieves, police say, because it's a concentrated area where people park cars, leaving their belongings in them.

A thief recently took Tomas Espina's entire Pink Floyd CD collection from his unlocked car, which was parked on a street.

"It was the whole thing, like from 1966 to 1994," said Espina, who lives and works in Mount Adams. "I was so mad."

More than half of Cincinnati neighborhoods recorded increases in theft reports, some of them sizable. Among those: Oakley, up 27 percent; College Hill, up 25 percent, and Clifton, up 26 percent.

Cincinnati police released the neighborhood crime breakdowns Thursday, a day after the department announced that reports of serious crime in the city overall dipped by 2 percent in 2003 compared with 2002. Although the city recorded a 26-year high in killings, crimes of violence dropped by nearly 9 percent.

The statistics record only crimes reported to police. Some experts estimate that as much as 40 percent of crime goes unreported, especially in areas where residents either don't trust police or may not know how to report.

Still, the numbers offer a view into overall crime trends. Cincinnati's breakdowns vary widely by neighborhood, and the reasons for the increases and decreases are often as diverse as the city's neighborhoods:

• Bond Hill, the site of the city's final two homicides in 2003, had the second-biggest decrease in overall serious crime in the city. Officials attribute that decline, in part, to undercover drug work by the district's Violent Crime Squad and to the loss of thousands of residents when the Huntington Meadows housing complex closed in 2002.

• In the West End, serious crime dropped more than 22 percent. Dale Mallory, president of the community council, attributed the decline to good police work. But, he added, it's difficult to celebrate too much because nine people were killed in the neighborhood in 2003.

• English Woods saw the biggest decrease in crime of any neighborhood - nearly 30 percent. Unlike many neighborhoods where a trend in one crime drove the overall number up or down, all seven categories of serious crime declined in this west-side area.

"There's not a lot of shootings, like downtown," said Mahogany Johnson, 21, who played basketball Thursday afternoon with her three siblings across the street from their apartment.

"We don't worry about our kids seeing bodies lying in the street or anything like that. It's OK here."

Capt. Michael Cureton, commander of District 2, ordered a mini task force around the holidays to target a rash of car break-ins. His district recorded a 12 percent jump in theft in 2003.

"We've tried to respond to the things people are complaining about, but also get to the other things, too," he said. "It's a tough balance to maintain that."

Several big apartment complexes in Oakley "are ripe for it because there are lots of nice cars just sitting there."

He said he plans to analyze the car break-in numbers as a way to determine the most common places and times of day.

Capt. James Whalen, who oversees the district that includes Mount Adams, said his officers will "continue to preach public education, which is not to leave anything in your car, and lock it."

Even so, the theft trend doesn't panic Libby Ostrow, owner of Libby's Deli on St. Gregory Street.

"The people who live up here are optimistic," she said. "It's a nice neighborhood."

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com