By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Crime in Princeton has trended down in the first six months of 2017 compared to the same period last year, police data revealed.
Police showed 387 offenses had been committed through June, down from 455 in the same timeframe in 2016. Princeton, a community with low amounts of crime to begin with, has seen no homicides, rapes or robberies, according to the monthly police report for June.
In terms of other crimes, there have been two motor vehicle thefts, 22 burglaries and three arsons, the data showed.
Overall, police arrests stood at 250 through June, down from 335 for the same six-month-span in 2016.
“It’s hard to read too much into short-term variations,” Councilwoman Heather H. Howard said in reacting to the crime data. “It’s good news, but I hesitate to read too much into it when I don’t have longitudinal data in front of me.”
New to the report is data, by race and ethnicity, covering the marijuana arrests, probable cause searches, pedestrian stops, use of force incidents and consent searches they have made. Police broke down all arrests they had made so far, also by race and ethnicity. For instance, 42 percent of the people arrested so far this year have been white, 31 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic and the rest other.
Howard said the reporting is an outgrowth of Police Chief Nicholas K. Sutter working with Rutgers Policing Institute “about creating a management tool and looking at police action in a number of areas and seeing what the impact is on different communities.”
Neither Chief Sutter nor Mayor Liz Lempert could be reached for comment.
In terms of other data, parking violations are on nearly on par for 2017, with 14,093, compared to 14,065 in the first six months of 2016. Money from parking tickets is seen as a key piece of the town budget, even though the municipality maintains it does not set a quota for officers to reach.
