Here’s the situation. You leave a Senators game or the Whitaker Center or a downtown restaurant well after dark and head for your car, which is parked on a side street away from the main flow of Second Street traffic. As you approach your car, you see someone coming up the street toward you. Do you feel a twinge of panic and concern for your safety? Statistically — and based on the experiences of many of us — you should be more prepared for an exchange of pleasant greetings than for any threat.

"I really believe that our downtown is a fairly safe place," says Steve Neiman, principal of The Neiman Group and one of the driving forces behind what has now been organized as the Downtown Development District. "When I hear about what goes on sometimes in Lancaster and York … we just don’t have that here."

Neiman says that in 20 years of running a business based downtown and coming and going during days, nights, and weekends, he’s never had any real problems "other than minor hassles." That’s been my experience as well and the experience of many other people like us who feel quite comfortable walking the downtown streets just about any time. And our reaction is borne out by a number of different crime statistics that were released at the end of last year.

Starting with the national macro picture, an FBI report said that serious crime reported to the police declined for the seventh straight year in 1998, with the murder and robbery rates reaching lows not seen in three decades. The report showed the total number of crimes went from 13.2 million in 1997 to 12.5 million in 1998, a drop of 5.3%. Violent crimes fell by 7.3% and property crimes went down by 6.2%.

That trend was not lost on Harrisburg. Murders in the city that hit a decade high of 20 in 1995 dropped to 13 in 1996, 11 in 1997, 6 in 1998, and 5 in 1999. For Dauphin County, the murder rate went from 15 in 1997 to 8 in 1998, and then to 6 last year. As Steve Neiman realizes, our neighboring counties were not as fortunate. Cumberland, Lancaster, Perry, and York counties all saw some level of increase in murders from 1998 to 1999. Only Lebanon County also saw the number of murders go down.

So, seemingly, the numbers show that crime has decreased in the past years. But, after the rash of recent occurrences of homicide in the city in just the first six weeks of the new year, the following question arises: Has the decline in criminal activity overall been a fluke? Is the occurrence of the number of crimes in such a short period of time an indication of things to come?

Not necessarily, according to the City’s press secretary, Randy King. "The first six weeks of 2000 have been extraordinary in that the number of serious crimes has been disproportionate to recent statistics," King said, "but we tend to view such things as being cyclical in that you may get a rash of crimes in a brief period of time and then you’ll have nothing for months."

A trend that may give hope for the future, although without complacency, is the reduction in juvenile crime, which is going toward its lowest level since 1993. During the first nine months of 1999, approximately 2,600 juvenile crimes were referred to juvenile probation, well below the 1998 total of 4,163.

Obviously, there are many reasons why crime is dropping. Many crimes are drug-related and the city has had a lot of success in arresting major drug dealers and sending them away. Good police work is at the top of most people’s list of reasons for the decline in crime, and in Harrisburg that seems to extend to the emphasis on community policing that started in 1997.

A survey conducted last fall indicated that most Harrisburg residents — 75% — believe the police are doing a good job in responding to their problems. Mayor Stephen R. Reed has said that police officers "have to be like any other city employee. They have to be interactive with the community, and police have to take responsibility for the districts where they are assigned."

Although Harrisburg has had several murders in the new year, the overall trend toward a safer downtown district is likely to continue. In a spiral of improvement, a safer downtown leads to more development, and more development leads to more people and activity downtown, which helps it to become still safer.

The Downtown Development District will help with the effort by funding people to provide hospitality service and ensure that the area is neat, clean, and attractive. And that should help extend the spiral a few more turns.

Steve Neiman remembers when Harrisburg’s downtown area looked pretty grim. But now we have City Island, the hotels, restaurants, the Whitaker Center, and, "When there’s light, life, and business, people feel safer."

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