CMPD Crime Numbers Mirror The Nation

But CMPD's Chief Rodney Monroe wants to take full credit for Charlotte's impressive decline in criminal activity.

WFAE's Lisa Miller reports the following:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police say so far this year crime is down 19 percent compared to this time last year. WFAE's Lisa Miller has more:

The police department holds a press conference every month to update the year's crime statistics. Over the last year, the message has been pretty much the same: crime is down significantly. Deputy Chief Harold Medlock delivered this month's variation.

"Our property crime overall decreased by more than 18 percent and our violent crimes decreased by 21 percent," said Medlock. "We've had year-to-date 51 homicides compared to 74 in the same period of 2008. That is a reduction of 31 percent."

Such big drops in crime have prompted some neighborhood groups to question if the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is classifying crime differently. Police Chief Rodney Monroe has said that's not the case and the department follows FBI guidelines. Medlock repeated the department's explanation for such dramatic drops in crime.

"As we have shared over the past 15 months we attribute that to the re-organization that occurred here 15 months ago," said Medlock. "We put more police officers on the street. We have assigned response area commanders to 39 geographic areas. They have direct responsibility and accountability for that geography across the county."

Rape is the only type of crime that increased so far this year. Reported rapes are up nearly 18 percent. The department has a theory for that increase. Medlock says, perhaps, better education in schools is helping to boost the number of rapes actually reported.

The numbers give RoMo and his posse' bragging rights, but does RoMo deserve the credit? Most people think not, theories range from outright fraud, and cooking the books, to under reporting, and even a broader national trend.

The United States Justice Department says that its a national trend.

RoMo credits the 31 percent decline in Charlotte's homicide rates to aggressive policing, but on RoMo's former beat DC Metro, unarguably one of the nation's toughest hood's murder is down 22 percent.

The decline is Washington's crime rate has also benefited the suburbs like Prince Georges County.

The (25%) decline in homicides (in Prince Georges County), as well as crime overall, is part of a national trend, said Gary LaFree, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland, College Park.

"As a country, we're where we were in the early 1960s," said LaFree, who said the fading of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s is a partial cause of the crime drop.

Crime nationwide also runs against conventional wisdom that illegal activities go up in bad economic times, he noted.

"What's strange is that we're in a bad economy, but we haven't seen it go up," he said. "The last time I remember this happening was the Great Depression."

In Charlotte with a comparable 12% unemployment rate people are asking do we believe the man behind the thin blue curtain or the US Justice Department?

Meanwhile several sources tell Cedar Posts that somethings up in the way of a sex scandal that has something to do with RoMo and the Bob Cat's Cable Box Arena.

More Soon Stay Tuned!