FBI Reports: Whitemarsh Crime Flat, Property Theft Drops

Crime in Whitemarsh has remained relatively flat over the past five years, according to the latest data released in FBI's Uniform Crime Report. However, the number of thefts decreased in 2011 after a small spike the year before, due in large part to the arrest of a single criminal, police say.

The annual report compiles crime statistics nationwide, which can then be broken down by state, municipality, or department. The report sorts the crimes into two major categories: violent crime, defined as murder, rape, robbery, and assault; and property crime, defined as burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.

Whitemarsh Police Chief Michael Beaty provided Patch with what he said are slightly updated figures for 2011, after a clerical error caused incorrect information to initially be placed into the FBI's database.

The data shows that Whitemarsh had a total of 237 crimes in the two major categories in 2011, down from 254 the year before. Most of that difference was accounted for in thefts, police say.

"The numbers of thefts can often be from a single person," said Beaty. "For example, someone breaking into cars in the train station's parking lot."

With the exception of robberies, which increased from one in 2010 to five in 2011, the numbers between the two years remained close, and also were similar to those reported in 2006. The crime rate remains lower in Whitemarsh than in its westerly neighbors, with one instance of violent or property crime reported for every 73 residents, compared to 51 in Conshohocken and 28 in Plymouth Township.

However, Beaty says that the kind of crime his department sees is changing.

"Commerce has flipped from industrial to office space, and that increases the amount of identity theft and credit card theft," Beaty says. "Those cases are often not as easy to [solve] as other crimes."

View the tables below to get another look at the data, click here to see more about crime in Whitemarsh, and check out the numbers for Conshohocken and Plymouth.

Violent crime in Whitemarsh:

Property crime in Whitemarsh:

Larceny-
theft