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The rate of violent crimes committed in Asbury Park continues to decrease, with 113 incidents reported in the first six months of this year, down from 124 this time last year, Police Chief Mark Kinmon said.

Rates have been decreasing for several years. In 2010, 174 incidents were reported in the first half of the year. The current violent crime rate is the lowest the city has seen in at least 10 years, Kinmon [pictured at right] said. These numbers reflect reported incidents, not arrests.

“We’re pretty pleased at the direction we’re going here, especially after the tough start we had in January and February,” Kinmon said.

There was an uptick in gun violence in the city earlier this year, most notably when an 11-year-old girl was reportedly hit with a stray bullet while cleaning her room on Monroe Avenue.

“We saw we had a lot of issues with gun violence and gang violence and we have a lot of officers addressing those issues and recovering weapons before they’re used on the street,” Kinmon said.

Programs implemented several years ago may also be contributing to the decrease in violent crime, Kinmon said, such as assigning officers to schools and running a junior police academy.

The number of burglaries and thefts in the city is also down this year, despite a significant uptick in such activity several years ago.

“Certainly, the economy played a big part in that,” Kinmon said. “Those numbers were up quite a bit in the last couple of years.”

But in this first six months of this year, burglary and theft rates have decreased. By June 30 this year, there had been 33 reported. For the same period last year, 49 were reported. And in the two previous years, numbers were in the 80s for the same six-month period.

“That’s just a great, great sign for us and for the city,” Kinmon said.

The department also implemented a new program to mitigate crime last week. From now on, there will be seven-day-a-week coverage from the city’s street crimes unit. Previously, due the police department’s shrinking personnel numbers, the unit was only able to work about four days a week.

Now, the department has hired six new officers who were recently laid off from Trenton’s police force, Kinmon said. This allowed them to bring the street crimes unit back seven days a week.

“It’s a tremendous help to us having a unit like that every day of the week,” he said. “They’re able to do a lot more things that our uniformed officers can’t do.”

Those officers will conduct investigations into gang violence and other issues, Kinmon said. Uniformed officers are unable to undertake these responsibilities because “they don’t have the time,” Kinmon said. “They’re responsible for calls for service, court duty, and a ton of other things.”

The city isn’t out of the woods yet though, Kinmon said.

“At no point are we saying, ‘Okay, problem solved,'” Kinmon said. “We know we have a lot of work to do and a lot of improvements to make. But we are heading in the right direction.”

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