Will County recorded nine murders in 2001, down from 19 in 2000, according to an annual Illinois State Police report.
“Murder is a very unpredictable thing,” said Joliet Deputy Police Chief Bill Fitzgerald.
But across Will County, reports of other types of violent crime increased in 2001 from levels in 2000. Police reported 7.9 percent more robberies, 3.8 percent more rapes and 3.8 percent more aggravated assaults and batteries than in the prior year, according to the state figures.
The increases came even as reports of crime fell statewide for an unprecedented seventh straight year.
In Joliet, a municipality of 106,000 that has transformed itself from a dying industrial city into a suburban boom town in the last decade, the number of murders plummeted to five last year from 13 in 2000.
Fitzgerald noted that most of those killings were in one incident: Three people were fatally shot in a crack house in October.
The average number of murders in the city has been closer to a dozen during the last couple of decades, Fitzgerald said. He credited the drop last year partly to community policing and a more aggressive stance against the drug trade in Joliet, although he acknowledged such a stark decline is hard to explain.
Of last year’s five homicides in Joliet, only one has been solved, he said.
The Illinois State Police’s annual “Crime in Illinois” report tracks eight major crimes: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and battery, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The number of such crimes reported by police declined to 524,386 in 2001 compared with 540,183 in 2000.
That decrease was led by a decline in property crimes, which account for most reported offenses.
The number of murders increased in Illinois and the Chicago region, and Chicago’s suburbs experienced an increase in reports of violent crime.
In Will County, with its population of 502,000, crime trends varied. Central Joliet, an urban area, experiences many of the same crime patterns as big cities–especially crimes related to the drug trade, officials said.
Will’s northwest corner has been densely developed in recent years with medium- to high-price subdivisions. It includes newly annexed parts of Joliet and Romeoville, Bolingbrook, Plainfield and slivers of Naperville and Aurora. Despite the housing boom, reports of property crime here mirrored statewide figures, falling nearly 8 percent across the county.
Rapid suburban development also stretches east along the Interstate Highway 80 corridor, but most of central and southern Will remains rural and sparsely populated.
The highest crime rates in the county were reported in University Park, with an average of 50 reported crimes per 1,000 people, and in Joliet, where the rate was 48.9 crimes per 1,000 residents. Romeoville reported an average of 43 crimes per 1,000 residents.
In Bolingbrook, there were 5.6 percent fewer burglaries reported last year than in 2000. The number of reported burglaries in Joliet dipped by almost 13 percent, to 885, from 1,016 in 2000.
Nine of the 30 Will County jurisdictions reported more burglaries last year than in 2000.
More Top Picks Best Pillows For Neck Pain
Although the number of reported criminal sexual assaults dropped slightly statewide, the number of such crimes reported in Will increased by nearly 4 percent, with sharp increases in the county’s bigger cities, Joliet and Bolingbrook. Countywide, the number of reported criminal sexual assaults increased to 162 in 2001 from 156 in 2000.
The number of reported criminal sexual assaults in Joliet increased to 70 from 59 in 2000. In Bolingbrook, they increased to 18 from 15 in 2000.
Although anecdotal evidence may suggest that a higher proportion of such victims come forward every year, sexual assaults are still considered one of the more underreported crimes, officials said.
A number of communities saw increases in the number of reported aggravated assaults and batteries. In Frankfort, a rapidly developing suburb of 10,000 people, the number of assaults and batteries tripled, to 27, from nine in 2000.
Manhattan, a town of 3,300 that is beginning to see a rapid residential development, saw a 123 percent increase in assaults and batteries, to 29, from 13 in 2000.
Manhattan police could offer no clear explanation for the large jump in reported assaults and batteries. Sgt. David Monson said he suspects the increase can be attributed to a combination of smaller factors: more people reporting violent domestic disputes, a handful of repeat offenders and gradual population growth.
“We’re getting new people in, and it’s probably going to go up, not down, in the future,” Monson said.
New Lenox, Plainfield, Braidwood and the Joliet Junior College campus police also reported increases of more than 100 percent in the number of assaults and batteries.
The number of drug-related arrests in Will increased by 3.5 percent, to 2,842, in 2001, according to the state report.