2016 FBI Crime Report: Limerick Among Safest Areas In Montgomery County

NORRISTOWN, PA — Violent crime and property crime continue to drop in Limerick, which has become one of the safest per-capita areas in Montgomery County., according to data released by the FBI on Monday.

The data does not include tabulations on crime in 2017, including the recent shooting last Friday.

The information comes from the FBI’s annual report Crime in the United States. The publication is a statistical compilation of offense, arrest, and police employee data reported by law enforcement agencies voluntarily participating in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, according to the FBI.

Violent crimes in Limerick — robberies, aggravated assault, rape, murder and manslaughter — decreased to just five overall in 2016, according to the FBI. There was just one robbery and four aggravated assaults.

While there were five cases of rape in 2015, there were none in 2016. There also was not a single murder or a manslaughter reported in the township from 2014 through 2016.

2016's numbers of five violent crimes in Limerick are down from 16 in 2015 and six in 2014.

Thefts/larcenies and burglaries decreased even more notably. There were 319 property crimes reported in 2016, down from 462 in 2015, and 501 in 2014.

This follows a trend of decreasing property nearly every municipality in Montgomery County.

Nationally, the FBI said the 2016 statistics showed an increase in the estimated number of violent crimes, with a 4.1 percent rise when compared with 2015 data. Nationally, property crimes dropped 1.3 percent.

The lowest total number of violent crimes in Montgomery County in 2016 was shared by Limerick, Upper Providence, and Narberth, which each had five incidents. Upper Providence has the largest population, and therefore had the lowest violent crime rate in the county by far. Upper Gwynedd, meanwhile, had one of the lowest property crime rates, with only 64 incidents in a population of nearly 16,000.

The 2016 statistics show the estimated rate of violent crime was 386.3 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants nationally, and the estimated rate of property crime was 2,450.7 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants. The violent crime rate rose 3.4 percent compared with the 2015 rate, and the property crime rate declined 2.0 percent.

The UCR Program report for 2016 included information from 16,782 agencies across the country, out of 18,481 city, county, university and college, state, tribal, and federal agencies eligible to participate, the FBI said.

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