Violent crime numbers increased 5.9 percent despite an overall 1.3 percent decrease in reportable crimes in Madison during 2008, police officials reported Wednesday.
The Madison Police Department’s Central District, where the University of Wisconsin campus is located, led Madison’s 2008 violent crime totals with 201 reported cases.
According to MPD Chief Noble Wray, the higher number of violent crime comes from an increase in homicides and aggravated assaults compared to 2007. There were 10 homicides in 2008, a 30 percent increase from seven in 2007 and the highest in Madison this decade.
“In Madison, it doesn’t take much to have an increase in homicides,” Wray said. “We are fortunate to have very few, and we’d like to keep it that way.”
MPD officials said the increase in violent crimes is mostly due to domestic violence, which Wray said was directly connected to more than 40 percent of Madison’s 463 aggravated assaults last year.
According to Domestic Abuse Intervention Services, Dane County’s only domestic violence shelter, demand for help services throughout the county was higher in the first three quarters of 2008 than in all of 2007.
DAIS has seen more brutal violence, abusers becoming more brazen and an increase in the number of death threats against their clients. One of the leading factors is the ailing economy, which has led residents to feel “more fear than ever before,” according to Jenny Wagner, legal systems coordinator at DAIS.
“In addition, we have seen more clients who feel so helpless and suicidal; they feel they have no way out,” Wagner said.
In the coming years, Wray said MPD will make efforts to collect more data on domestic violence and develop strategies to fix the situation since many of the domestic cases are often charged with simple battery instead of substantial batteries.
Madison also experienced a 1.1 percent decrease in burglaries from 2,060 in 2007 to 2,038 in 2008. There were 1,305 residential and 733 non-residential burglaries reported.
The total number of reported crimes in Madison was 10,572 in 2008 compared to 10,705 in 2007. The city’s population has steadily increased since 1990 and there were about 1,840 more residents than reported in 2007.
