Local crime is an important element of community awareness, and understanding it can reveal a lot about people’s perceptions of safety. While aggregate fear of crime is often overshadowed by more general declines in crime rates, it can vary significantly by neighborhood and can also be impacted by the persistence of crime at specific locations. These individual-level perceptions and experiences are rarely captured by national polls or even by police satisfaction surveys.
Americans are very interested in local crime news, and some are more interested in specific aspects of this news than others. For example, Black Americans express greater interest than other racial and ethnic groups in both what their local officials are doing to address crime (56%) and tips on how to stay safe (44%). In addition, they are more interested than whites in the underlying causes of local crime and the broader patterns in local crime (50% vs. 31% respectively).
Calls-for-Service reports are a great source of information about local crime as they provide actual reported events at a specific location. Additionally, commercial service providers offer Crime Forecast Reports that rate the risk of crime at a particular address and compare it to other areas using a complex model that incorporates police data as well as population, economic and housing information.
The NYPD publishes crime-related statistics on the citywide, borough and precinct levels. They are updated weekly and can be accessed at CompStat 2.0. This data can be useful to assess crime trends in specific neighborhoods, but it should be viewed with caution as not all crimes are reported to the police. In particular, felony assaults and all crimes that are not categorized in the seven major categories may rise or fall at different times due to factors outside of law enforcement’s control.