By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
MONTGOMERY — Montgomery Township ranks seventh among the top 50 safest cities in New Jersey and 32nd in the top 100 safest cities in the United States for 2015, according to www.safewise.com.
This is the second year in a row that Montgomery Township has made Safewise’s list as one of the safest communities in New Jersey. It ranked no. 12 in 2014. Other towns that made the list in 2014 — but not 2015 — included Plainsboro Township and the Town of Princeton.
Mayor Christine Madrid was pleased with Safewise’s inclusion of Montgomery Township as one of the safest communities in the United States.
“Our outstanding police force deserves recognition for their hard work and dedication to serving our community,” Mayor Madrid said. “As elected officials, it is gratifying to see that our emphasis on public safety is yielding excellent results.”
Safewise, which is an independent consumer comparison website that helps consumers compare home security systems and providers, compiled the list by identifying communities with a population of more than 10,000 people in 2013. Montgomery’s population is 22,254 people.
The next step was to review crime data from those communities — known as the Uniform Crime Report — that is reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Uniform Crime Report statistics in New Jersey are collected from local police departments by the New Jersey State Police, which in turn provides the FBI with the data.
The Uniform Crime Report consists of reports of murder, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson. Murder, robbery, rape and aggravated assault are considered to be violent crimes, and the others — burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson — are deemed to be non-violent or property crimes.
According to www.safewise.com, “we reviewed the latest FBI crime report statistics (based on the Uniform Crime Report), comparing the number of reported violent crimes and property crimes in each city. To compare small and large cities fairly, we calculated the chance of both types of crime happening per 1,000 people.”
Based on the Uniform Crime Report statistics compiled by the Montgomery Township Police Department in 2014, there was one homicide reported and one robbery. There were no aggravated assaults, but there were 26 burglaries, 82 larceny-thefts and six motor vehicle thefts reported last year.
Broken down, that means there were only two violent crimes — the murder and the robbery — and 116 non-violent or property crimes (burglaries, larceny-thefts and motor vehicle thefts).
The United States violent crime rate is 3.67 per 1,000 persons, and the property crime rate is 27.30 per 1,000 persons. In Montgomery Township, the rate of violent crime is 0.13 per 1,000 persons and the property crime rate is 4.58 per 1,000 persons.
While Montgomery Township has been included in SafeWise’s list for two years in a row, Plainsboro Township and the Town of Princeton also have appeared on the list. The two towns were included on the list for 2014, based on the 2011 Uniform Crime Statistics report. They did not make the list for 2015.
