Although burglaries remain a problem, crime in Prince George’s County is the lowest it has been in 35 years, a milestone police officials chalk up to increased safety programs, more patrolling officers and a change in county strategy.

The drop-off mirrors a national trend of decreased crime, criminology experts said. But county police emphasized the local change has been in part brought on by a concentrated effort to pinpoint problematic areas in the region.

At an awards ceremony last Wednesday, County Executive Jack Johnson presented proclamations commemorating a countywide drop in crime from 2005 figures. In every area except burglaries, crime dropped at least 25 percent — county burglary rates have increased by 2 percent since 2005, said District 1 Commander Maj. Daniel Dusseau, who oversees county police in College Park.

In 2005, crime rates in the county soared.

During that year, the county saw 161 homicides and 15,188 auto thefts — in 2009, there were 92 homicides and 6,467 auto thefts in the county — according to police statistics. Dusseau said police buckled down on crime by targeting neighborhoods where certain criminal activities would happen regularly.

This police work was necessary, he said, to prevent “five incidents from becoming 10.”

Crime prevention is not a novel idea, Dusseau said.

“I have a meeting every day about crime patterns,” Dusseau said. “People who do certain types of crimes, like burglary, do it multiple times. … If we see a pattern we move additional resources to the area, sometimes from other parts of the county.”

Most recently resources were reallocated to District 1, which had 20 or more patrolling officers from all over the county driving the College Park streets following a rash of break-ins this past winter break.

But District 1, which includes College Park, led the county in decreased auto thefts, which criminal justice and criminology professor Charles Wellford said could be attributed to several factors.

In the last few years, Wellford said, police have been enforcing laws to keep early morning commuters from warming their car in the driveway while they get ready for work, inviting carjackers to drive away with their vehicle. When patrolling officers find an unattended car running they issue a warning first, then a fine for a second offense.

“Increased enforcement has stepped up in the last couple of years, and there has been a decrease in the number of stolen vehicles in Prince George’s County,” Wellford said.

He added other factors, including a relative stabilization of the drug trade, less fighting between drug dealers and an aging generation of criminals who pose less of a threat have also attributed to the drop in crime rate, though it is unclear by how much.

“Research says all of those reasons play a factor, but trying to provide a precise estimate of what all of those things have contributed has not been achieved,” Wellford said. “Nationally, crime rates have declined for whatever reason.”

Although crime rates have decreased across the board, police are still receiving the same number of emergency calls, Dusseau said.

“Police in the county receive 182,000 calls for service per year, which is not down from 2005,” he said. “But crime is down, so that means people are calling the police for things they wouldn’t have before. … In this day and age, people will call the police for anything. But we encourage that.”

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