Bismarck Crime Stats Released

Bismarck's population may be increasing but our crime is not... Police release the crime stats ...  More »

Bismarck's population may be increasing but our crime is not... Police release the crime stats for 2007. Serious crime in the city decreased by 3 percent compared to 2006. While crimes against people as a whole decreased there were significant increases in the amount of rapes and sexual assaults. Forcible rapes went up 66 percent with 30 reports. Sexual Assaults increased by 16 percent. (Keith Witt / Bismarck Police Chief) What we did find in most of these sexual assaults, the victim did know the perpetrator, so we don't see any situation involving basically sexual assaults involving strangers where there are just people running around at random basically commiting sexual assaults. We are attributing hopefully, maybe it is just we are getting more of those offenses reported to us because of the public education being done. Witt says society is also less accepting of domestic violence and sexual assault. There are also ways you can help reduce crime. Lock your vehicles and homes and keep your valuables out of sight. Call police if you see something not right. When they see something, call us right away, see suspicious activity or crime in progress, see a reluctance of citizens to do that, they think they may be bothering the police, but that can go a tremendous way in solving crimes and helping us find the people who are doing wrong. Witt says at any given time last year the Police Department was about 10 officers short. They're fully staffed now but he says the department could use six more officers to handle the increase in calls. And he says they need to be more proactive. Here's an interesting fact there were 3,149 traffic crashes. That averages to about 10 a day with the damage costing about 17 million dollars.  « Less