Feeling unsafe in Salt Lake

Coming on the heels of February's tragic Trolley Square massacre in which five people were killed at random and four others injured, many Salt Lake residents believe their city isn't as safe as it was 10 or 20 years ago.

A new survey conducted April 3-4 by Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV asked Salt Lake residents whether they believe the city is more safe from violent crime than it was 10 or 20 years ago or if they believe it is less safe.

Twenty-nine percent of the 413 respondents said they believed the city was definitely or probably more safe today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. But 52 percent said they believed the city was probably or definitely less safe from violent crime. Another 19 percent did not know.

But a peek at crime statistics gathered by the Salt Lake City Police Department shows in this case, public perception does not fully match reality.

In 1976 there were 12 homicides in Salt Lake City. That number grew to 19 by 1986 and 20 by 1996. In 2006, however, the city recorded just 8 homicides. Through Friday, there had been 7 homicides in the city this year.

Likewise, the number of reported rapes grew from 107 in 1986 to 152 in 1996. But in 2006 there were only 98 reported rapes, according to police.

The only violent crimes category that seems to consistently be on the rise is aggravated assault, which made a staggering 129 percent increase from 1976 to 2006.

Overall, however, violent crime in the city was down 3.6 percent over the past 10 years. The department's statistics do show violent crime rose 16 percent since 1986 and 51 percent since 1976.

But what should make Salt Lake City's decreasing crime statistics over the past 10 years even more of a comfort for residents is the city's recent population boom. Every report by the U.S. Census Bureau from 1950 to 1990 showed a decrease in the city's population. From 1990 to 2000, however, the population grew by nearly 22,000, according to the Census Bureau.

Salt Lake City's current population is about 181,000.

Salt Lake police detective Jeff Bedard said that doesn't take into account the huge daily influx of people who come into the city for their jobs — a substantially higher number than in decades past.

A 2005 Census report estimated Salt Lake City's daytime population at 313,000 people. In cities of at least 100,000 people, only Irvine, Calif., sees a greater daytime swell in its population than Salt Lake City.

When the number of tourists, convention attendees, business people and those coming into the city for movies, dinner or a sporting event are taken into account, Bedard said it "speaks volumes" to the job the police department is doing.