We’ve been writing about Seattle crime statistics for a few years now. This year we’ve had some help but now that the 2007 totals are available from SPD we’re planning to dig in with our own special shovel to get a better view of what is happening in neighborhoods throughout the city and up here on Capitol Hill.

To get us started, the good folks at Central District News hooked us up with 10-year trend data for Capitol Hill’s census tracts. We like to view our crime data in relation to the entire city — so the data below shows percent of total Seattle crime for each Capitol Hill census tract over the last decade. You can see that the general trend in all tracts is lower — except for the upward orange-dot climb of #84, the tract nestled into the armpit of Broadway and Madison.

The other two Madison border-tracts, 76 and 75, have downticked but still lead the Hill in crime by a wide margin. Keep in mind that these numbers don’t account for population density — we’re only looking at contribution to the fair city of Seattle’s crime totals, not per capita measurements.

Looking at the separate tract totals leaves a lot to the randomness of geography. So here’s a look at Capitol Hill’s combined crime forces:

As a whole, Capitol Hill’s contribution to Seattle crime fell in 2007, crossing below 6% of the city’s total for the first time since 1998 (a memorable year for singularly horrible Seattle crime with the Aurora Bridge bus plunge).

But what about the rest of the city — even with total Seattle crime hitting an all-time modern-day low, there are pockets where trouble is brewing. And what of the specific types of crimes that are increasing in our own neighborhood even as the area’s crime rate dips? We’ll look at these particulars over the next few weeks and let you know what we find. But one thing we’ll try not to do is allow emotion to cloud our vision and yours. We’ll let other sources handle that.