WILMINGTON — The City of Wilmington’s 2018 end of year crime review is in and ‘part one’ crime has hit a record low since 1993, according to Wilmington Police Department Chief Ralph Evangelous.
From 2002 to 2018 there has been a steady decline in part one crime which includes: criminal homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
According to the FBI’s crime data for 2017, Wilmington ranked 11th in the state when compared to other cities with a population of at least 50,000 when it came to violent crime and part one crimes per 100,000 people.
In this case, being towards the bottom of the list was a good thing with Gastonia coming in at number one with a population of 76,191 and a violent crime rate of 744.2 per 100,000.
Wilmington, on the other hand, has a population of 119,422 and had 626.4 violent crime rates per 100,000. Of the 16 cities on the list, only Jacksonville, Chapel Hill, Concord, Huntersville, and Cary ranked better.
Over the past 16-years Wilmington has seen a growth of about 33-percent in population terms, yet from 2002-2018 crime has dropped by nearly 50-percent, according to Evangelous’ presentation.
As many residents of the city are aware, the Wilmington Police Department utilizes a system known as Shotspotter to locate potential gunshots and crimes taking place in strategic locations throughout the city. In 2018 there were 400 Shotspotter notifications, down 5 percent from 2017 when there was a total of 422 notifications.
Homicides also dropped significantly from 2017 to 2018 with a total of 9 homicides in 2018, down 10 from 2017. WPD has a clearance rate of 66.7-percent when it comes to closing homicide cases, the national average is 63-percent.
