A big summer for burglars in central Capitol Hill — and car thieves everywhere else on the Hill — didn’t reverse the most significant crime trends we’ve seen so far in 2011. There were fewer street robberies through the first nine months of 2011 than we’ve seen in the same period in recent years while Capitol Hill’s 2011 burglar problem got even worse.

We looked at the 2011 half-year totals here.

The above 3/4-Year grid tells the overall story for the first nine months of the year across the four East Precinct beats that cover Capitol Hill and most of First Hill — see the map below for the beat totals. Across the five categories, the Hill’s total of 2,244 investigated crimes clocks in at almost its exact 3-year average.

Before somebody brings up reports of de-policing at SPD, know that dispatch calls (victim reported incidents) across the city are up only slightly in 2011 while SPD initiated “on-view” incidents are down about 6%. SPD-provided totals:

• 2010 Dispatch calls  152,074
• 2011 Dispatch calls 156,033

• 2010 On-views 107,795
• 2011 On-views 101,058

Also, anybody who might have been a victim of a “de-policed crime” would still be able to report it where it would surface in the crime total stats. For more on the statistics, here is SPD’s data page and FAQ. Now would be a good time to emphasize our repeated caveat: Seattle is a fantastically safe city and the numbers say it is getting safer. And another necessary caveat: SPD has a lot of problems — the latest comes in the form of this rebuke from the Justice Department over the department’s internal investigation policies.

Back on Capitol Hill, the beat totals for the first three quarters of 2011 remain mostly in-line with recent years with northern Capitol HIll’s jump finally showing signs of slowing over summer and lower Pike/Pine and Broadway’s E2 trending back higher toward “normal” levels.

The drivers for these beat trends are shown in the table below. First, some full-city context on 2011 trends from SPD:

Property Crimes are down 7% across the City in the first nine months of 2011, when compared with the same time period in 2010. Vehicle thefts and larceny/thefts are trending down while burglaries are up slightly. 

Here’s what the numbers show in Capitol Hill’s four beats, detailed in the table below.

• C1 — North Capitol Hill’s annual totals didn’t improve much as burglary slowed over summer but remains well above recent trends. Theft in the area, on the other hand, cemented its bad year with a higher than average total of bicycle, tools and car prowls in the summer quarter. Even car thieves got in on the act this summer managing a total of 37 stolen vehicles to push northern Capitol Hill’s car thievery totals back to typical levels.
• C2 — Central Capitol Hill between Broadway and 19th Ave is back to more typical levels after turning in a mostly quiet first half of 2011. Burglars got back to work after doing relatively limited damage in the first half of the year — from July to September, there were 37 burglaries tallied in the beat compared with 18 during the same period in 2010. But street and business hold-ups remained stable and this was one of the few areas that didn’t suffer a rash of summer auto theft.
• E1 — I-5 shores and POWHAT was a model of consistency this summer with totals that have pushed its yearly trends remarkably lower. Crime totals in the densest area of the Hill have been kept in check even as they rise elsewhere. Note that, here too, street and business robbery totals are down.
• E2 — The First Hill and lower Pike/Pine consistently turn in the area’s highest raw crime totals and 2011 is no exception but, like E1, the trends paint a picture of a safer neighborhood. Thanks to drops in assaults and thefts, the first three quarters in E2 show an overall total nearly 12 below recent averages. But there are a few warnings signs from summer. After a massive suppression in 2010, car thefts jumped back to typical levels this summer and the 11 reported street and business robberies was also a troubling return to the norm.

Those are the totals and trends for the first nine months of the year — three more are adding their tallies to spreadsheets now. Crime is much more than numbers, we know — especially when it comes to totals for incidents like homicide and rape.

There are still no answers for that “1” in the 2011 homicide column as the investigation of the murder of Zachary Lewis continues. In the meantime, we hope the available statistics will help you better understand what is happening on the streets around you the next time we report on a Capitol Hill crime.