Crime Trends

Crime rates have been steadily decreasing throughout the country over the last decade.  Happily, crime rates in Maryland have been decreasing at more than double the rate of rates in the rest of the country.  This is no doubt partly due to Governor O'Malley's creation of the Baltimore CitiStat program, which has had a tremendous impact in Maryland's highest-crime city.  

Unfortunately, while crime in Maryland and the rest of the country has been plummeting, this has not been true in Anne Arundel County.  The number of Part 1 crimes (which includes both violent crime and property crimes) has remained essentially flat over the past decade in Anne Arundel County:

Violent crime (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) has been declining even faster than total crime in Maryland over the past decade.  Again, however, Anne Arundel County has not seen the decrease in violent crime that one would expect based on trends in the rest of the country:

Low Anne Arundel County Police Staffing Levels

One of the factors contributing to the stagnating crime rate in Anne Arundel County is that we employ less than half the number of police officers per 1,000 residents as the national average.  According to the FBI, the average county employed 2.72 police officers per 1,000 residents in 2009.  Anne Arundel has only 652 full-time police officers, of which 511 are on patrol. Using the new census numbers and excluding Annapolis, this means the county has only 1.30 full-time sworn police officers per 1000 residents. 

Anne Arundel County's police staffing is not only extremely low compared to the rest of the country, but we are not keeping up with the growth in the county's population.  Fifteen years ago, there were 612 full-time sworn police officers in Anne Arundel representing 1.42 officers per 1000 residents compared to today's level of 1.30.