Now, he hopes his deputies can simply hold the line. He only need look across the river to see what might lie ahead. Kennewick also enjoyed a drop in crime, but the Benton County sheriff's office and Richland police were not so lucky. After years of declining crime numbers, the agencies reported slight increases for 2000 although the gains were not enough to put them back where they were as late as 1996. Major crime in Benton County increased 8.3 percent and in Richland 12.7 percent.
Experts say crime has gone as low as it can go.
Jack Levin, a criminologist and director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University, spoke to the Oregonian recently about Portland's homicide rate, which is at its lowest point in 29 years. That's because the tides are turning on two factors driving crime down - an aging population and good economic times. There's increasing talk of a recession and indications that the burgeoning teen-age population is no less violent today than the early 1990s when the youth violence epidemic peaked. A recent report by the Surgeon General found there's been no change since 1993 in the proportion of young people who have committed acts with the potential to kill or injure. What's more, arrests for aggravated assault remain 70 percent higher than their pre-epidemic levels.