‘Is Manchester Still a Safe Place to Live?’

That’s the question on many peoples’ minds recently after a series of in town.

But according to information provided by the Manchester Police Department, the number of reported Part 1 crimes – the most violent forms of felony offenses, such as homicide, rape, robbery, assault and arson – have actually decreased markedly since 2007.

In 2007, there were 2,087 of those crimes reported to the Manchester Police Department within a 12-month period; by 2010 the most recent year those statistics had been compiled by the department, those types of reported violent crimes had decreased to 1,887 incidents, a drop of more than 11.5 percent (see the chart attached to this article).

Manchester saw a three percent increase in those statistics in 2008, when 2,149 Part 1 crimes were reported; that figure dropped one percent in 2009, to 2,132 Part 1 crimes reported, before dropping 11.5 percent in 2010 to 1,887 incidents.

Town officials attributed the drop to two primary factors: a national trend that has seen a similar decrease in reported violent felonies in recent years, and the Manchester Police Department’s aggressive anti-crime and enforcement tactics.

“I know firsthand that law enforcement in town took special care to deal with people that needed to be dealt with,” said General Manager Scott Shanley. “They have identified people who were actively breaking the laws and ensured that they follow those laws, or removed them from the streets.”

Manchester Police Chief Marc Montminy acknowledged the national trend downward in crime statistics, but also attributed the town’s local decrease to his department’s “aggressive stance” against crime.

“I think it’s a combination of the country’s drop in those same statistics and partly due to Manchester’s aggressive stance to combat crime,” Montminy said. “Manchester has a very active police department.”

Nationally, FBI crime reports have shown a decrease in violent and property crimes since 2008, decreasing about five percent a year.

But a series of high-profile violent crimes in town in the past year, beginning with the shooting spree of that left eight of his co-workers dead, has left many in the community questioning exactly how safe a place to live Manchester still is.

When a at the Super Convenience Store on Hartford Road May 22, less than two days after a that had left the suspect dead and a police officer wounded, many residents said they were beginning to worry about their safety for the first time in town, with some saying they didn’t even feel comfortable walking the streets of Manchester alone or at night.

Police have since in the Super Convenience Store shooting, charging them both with felony murder.

“I think that’s a perception that people have because we’ve had a terrible spate of unstable people with a lot of guns who have acted violently over the past few years,” Shanley said. “And I hear it too – people literally say, ‘what’s going on in Manchester?’ But that’s not just a problem in Manchester, they've had similar instances of crazy people with guns in Glastonbury, South Windsor and many other places in recent years. That’s a national problem that allows mentally unstable people to have as many guns as they feel they need to have.”

Montminy said that Manchester’s homicide rate has been “extremely low” for many years, even counting last year’s Hartford Distributors shooting, and that the town’s overall crime statistics compare favorably when matched up against similarly sized towns throughout the state.

, which has a slightly larger population than Manchester’s, saw a 13 percent drop in its violent crime rate from 2009 to 2010, down from 2,268 reported violent incidents in 2009 to 1,981 in 2010. 

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