Cedar Falls Crime Rate Set for Double-Digit Dip

Crime in Cedar Falls is dropping for the second year in a row.

Police Chief Jeff Olson said the crime rate fell by 15 percent in 2010 and is on track to do the same or better this year.

Why are crime rates dropping?

“It’s so hard to say,” Olson said. “A group of two or three can commit 200 crimes, and once you catch them, the rate goes down.”

He said the work to keep crime down through community policing and what he calls, “the broken window theory,” in which vandalism and other minor crimes are nipped in the bud.

Community policing means officers are out on the streets, talking to citizens and encouraging them to report incidents.

“The more you talk to people, the more they call,” he said.

Encouraging community members to report even small crimes plays into the second part of the department’s strategy.

“Everyone who starts a path of crime starts small,” Olson said. “If you can catch them, they’re less likely to move up to bigger crimes. So we pay just as much attention to small crimes as big ones.”

That idea is the philosophy behind the broken window theory. Explaining the theory, Olson described an abandoned house. At first it looks nice and is left alone. But eventually weeds start to grow. Maybe a widow is broken. That broken window is a small thing that nonetheless makes the house a target for vandals and burglars, he said.

The idea, he said, is to take care of any proverbial broken windows -- small crimes -- in the community before those lead to bigger problems.

People in Cedar Falls said they were glad to hear the news.

"It's a wonderful thing that it's dropped," Carol Mayfield, 59, said. She's a rural Black Hawk County resident whose children all attended Cedar Falls schools. "I think that can be contributed to many factors - our excellent police force, excellent school systems and the care our parents in this community give to raising their children."

Crime rates aren’t just dropping locally.

University of Northern Iowa Associate Professor of Criminology Keith Crew said nationally, crime rates have been dropping steadily since 1993.

One possible reason, he said, is a leveling off of drug use during the 1990s. Another is long jail terms for repeat offenders.

But no one seems to know for sure why crime is down. An article from the Huffington Post even suggested transcendental meditation in Fairfield could be involved.

Regarding the local trend, Crew pointed out in an area with a small population and generally low crime rate like Cedar Falls, even small changes from year to year can make a big difference statistically.

“If you have two homicides one year and just one homicide the next year, it’s a 50 percent drop,” he said.

In fact, Cedar Falls had no homicides in 2010, and one case of manslaughter, according to a report provided by the department. There were three robberies, one kidnapping and 20 sexual assualts. By far the most common crime on the department's list was disorderly calls, with 893 incidents. The full list is included in the picture gallery to the right. The FBI also creates a yearly crime log for Iowa towns.

Why do you think crime is down? Tell us in the comments.