LEWISTON – Every year, the state releases crime rates for each city and town to reveal the level of violence, thefts and acts of destruction. Every year, police gloat over slight declines in crime or struggle to explain why there was an increase.

This year, though, police in Lewiston are still getting over the “wow” factor of the latest numbers. Although preliminary, the latest figures show a dramatic 21 percent drop in serious crime in the year 2003.

“This is yet another indicator that Lewiston is a great place to live and work,” said Police Chief William Welch.

The early numbers show drastic drops in aggravated assaults, burglaries and thefts. Overall, early reports show a drop from a crime rate of 49.61 in 2002 to 39.12 last year.

That means that out of every 1,000 people living in Lewiston, between 39 and 40 were directly affected last year by a serious crime.

Although police have noted several crime rate drops in previous years, none has been this dramatic. According to the recently compiled numbers, crimes committed in Lewiston didn’t merely decline, they plummeted.

“We have always been a safe community, despite perceptions to the contrary,” said City Administrator Jim Bennett. “And this dramatic decrease in crime once again positively reflects the ongoing exemplary partnership between the community and our law enforcement team.”

Welch suggested that the drop in crime may be due to changes in the way police do their jobs. Community policing and cooperation between police and other law enforcement agencies are having an effect, Welch said.

In particular, the efforts of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, the Central Maine Violent Crimes Task Force and the Computer Crimes Task Force helped round up large numbers of suspects before new or additional crimes were committed.

Although the numbers are clearly down in Lewiston, an official at the state’s Uniform Crime Reporting Division cautioned that it would be months before final tallies were known.

Mary Anderson, who works for the UCR, said analysts were still waiting for numbers to come in from police departments in various cities and towns. Once those numbers are processed, they will have to be reviewed by the FBI, which keeps track of crime statistics.

Final numbers should be released in May or June, Anderson said. When that happens, crime rates will be broken down by individual offenses, to show which crimes declined in number and which were on the rise.

State totals will also give police a chance to see how the local crime compares with that of Maine as a whole. And as they do every year, police and city administrators will take a look at how the crime rate here stacks up against other cities such as Portland, Bangor and Augusta.

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