Introduction:
I. Two weeks ago, Tuesday, October 23, I was woken up right around 2:00 am to my roommates speaking with two unfamiliar voices. I went out in the living room to investigate and found a security guard and a police officer gathering details of a robbery for a police report. 1) Turns out one of my roommates left his window open; someone popped the screen out and grabbed his computer right off his desk. 2) As the police officer later let us know, this was the 5th report of burglaries in Hidden Hills for that night. Not the most comforting thing to hear before you fall asleep. II. Today I am going to talk to you about the crime rate in Kalamazoo and how it matches up to the rest of the nation and I will explain some factors that influence the statistics, and tell you about the most common crimes in the country.
Body
I. As I started researching this topic, I was convinced that I would find nothing but information on skyrocketing crime rates. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the national rate is steadily decreasing and Kalamazoo is no exception. 1) In a 2012 article from the Kalamazoo Gazette Emily Monacelli reported that, “Serious crimes in the city dropped for the second consecutive year and have declined by 23 percent since 2007” a) Evidence has shown that crime is trending downward b) Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety’s annual report to the FBI showed that officers handle 4,110 serious crimes in 2011, down from 4,234 in 2010 and 5,332 in 2007. 2) The overall crime rate in the U.S. is decreasing right along with Kalamazoo. The decline in recent years is especially puzzling to professionals due to assumptions that crime typically increases during recessions. a) Violent crimes have largely declined in recent years to what appears to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years. b) Statistics from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report estimated that in 2011 there