An increase in violent crime in 2020 mirrors a national trend, said Chief Darren McConnell. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank’s crime rates continued a long trend of gradual decline in 2020, police Chief Darren McConnell tells redbankgreen.
One glaring exception: an increase in reported rapes.
A Red Bank man was arrested last month on charges arising from an alleged aggravated sexual assault on a child in early 2017, police said.
Travis Lane, 59, of South Pearl Street, was arrested February 20, the same day police were made aware of the allegations, Chief Darren McConnell told redbankgreen.
Chief Steve McCarthy is expected to request authorization to hire three officers to combat rising crime rates. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank’s top cop is hoping to do some force rebuilding following the recent release of data showing a spike in crime in 2010 and unreleased figures showing that it’s gotten worse this year.
Chief Steve McCarthy has asked the borough council to OK the hiring of three patrol officers in an effort to get the number of uniformed officers back to 40, the number it began the year with.
The request, coming as officials brace for what is expected to be the tightest municipal budget in years, follows the release of the State Police annual Uniform Crime Reports data earlier this month showing that both violent and nonviolent crime in town shot up in 2010.
And if the trends of the first ten months of 2011 hold, “we’re looking at another 8- to 10-percent increase” for 2011, McCarthy tells redbankgreen.
The Planned Parenthood clinic on Newman Springs Road is the purported terminus of a protest walk planned for March 12. Below, Councilman Ed Zipprich. (Click to enlarge)
The Red Bank council’s rubber-stamping of some two dozen requests for public events was interrupted Monday night when Councilman Ed Zipprich raised security issues in connection with a planned anti-abortion march scheduled for next month.
Invoking the recent shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords and a push by New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith to have the federal government redefine rape in an effort to limit access to abortions, Zipprich expressed concern that the march might attract someone bent on violence.
Red Bank Police Chief Steve McCarthy, commenting on Thursday’s report of a drop in crime in the borough in 2009, says next year’s report will show the opposite.
“Obviously, they’re encouraging,” McCarthy says of the 2009 results, which showed precipitous declines in the number of both violent and nonviolent crimes. “But I have to say, it’s one year, and I can tell you that comparing last year to this year, we’re up.”
Through October of this year, there have already been 21 robberies, up from the full-year 2009 total of 10, McCarthy says. The number of reported burglaries, too, is up, to 29 through October, from 22 in all of last year, he says.
Even with a rare double homicide, Red Bank’s crime rate plummeted in 2009, according to data released today by the New Jersey State Police.
The agency’s annual Uniform Crime Report indicates that both violent and non-violent crime rates fell in the borough from 2008, when no homicides occurred.
The number of reported rapes dropped from four in 2008 to one last year, and the total number of violent crimes fell by nearly half, from 57 to 30, the report says.