Carmel Convo
There are many reasons that people move to the City of Carmel, but one of the main ones is that it’s a very safe community. Crime rates are low in Carmel, and the amazing thing is as the city’s population grows, the number of crimes isn’t increasing at the same rate.
I recently attended a training session put on by the Carmel Police Department for the Carmel City Council and I was impressed by the numbers they shared.
Carmel’s population increased from more than 86,000 in 2014 to more than 96,000 in 2018. The incident rate for crimes remained fairly the same during that time though, with 85,948 incidents in 2014, 83,904 in 2015, 83,955 in 2016, 85,537 in 2017 and 83,708 in 2018.
You would expect that with population growing that we’d have more crime, but it’s generally stayed about the same. So when you consider crime per capita – which is the number of incidents per person – we are actually seeing crime decrease in Carmel.
And this is just considering residential population growing. We are seeing an influx of people coming into Carmel to work at the new businesses locating to the city and to frequent our stores and restaurants.
When you break down the numbers, there was one homicide in 2014 and zero in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Year-by-year robberies were six in 2014, six in 2015, seven in 2016, six in 2017 and 10 in 2018, so generally about the same. Most impressively, nearly all of the robberies in Carmel are cleared. The message is clear: If you rob a bank or retail store in Carmel, it’s very likely you’ll get caught.
Rapes, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle thefts fluctuated from year to year, but no major increases were seen and in most cases the numbers were the same or lower than they were five years later. So, despite our growth, the number of crimes is staying the same and our rate is going down.
Adam Aasen is a co-owner of Donatello’s Italian Restaurant and a former journalist who lives in Carmel. His column “Carmel Convo” appears periodically in The Reporter.