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ATLANTIC CITY — Three decades into the resort’s gaming era, crime is down.

Not just from its peak. Down to pre-casino levels. For four years running.

Who knew?

Not enough people, apparently.

“I don’t think the public perception is in line with the statistics,” Police Chief John Mooney said.

“Not at all, and it’s very frustrating,” said state Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, the city’s mayor from 1990 to 2001.

The Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority conducted focus groups in New York, Boston and Cincinnati a few years ago, Executive Director Jeff Vasser said, and the results were less than desirable.

“The perception was that there’s nothing else to do in the city but gamble, the city is dirty and the city has a high crime rate,” Vasser said. “Our job is to get the word out that Atlantic City is not the city of 20 years ago. There are people walking around with 20-year-old perceptions.”

Crime did rise in the first 10 years of gaming, but has fallen in the 20 years since. The challenge is to impress the truth upon even those visitors who have landed in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“When people come to visit, often times we only get one opportunity to make an impression on them,” Mooney said. “Although the overwhelming majority of violent crime has no tie to gaming or hospitality whatsoever, it does have an impact on the view of Atlantic City as a safe environment for the industry.”

“Some of this has to do with the physical condition of the city. When people see abandoned buildings and trashed streets and stuff, they don’t feel it’s a safe environment,” Whelan said.

Relatively low risk

Throughout the casino era, Atlantic City’s crime has trended lower than the average U.S. municipality’s, even amid a huge new influx of visitors and commuters:

Violent crimes rose 27 percent in the United States from 1978 to 2008, but rose only 4 percent here.

Thefts dropped 4 percent nationwide in the same period. In Atlantic City, they fell 43 percent.

“The risk of being a crime victim is relatively low in Atlantic City,” said Anthony Marino, former longtime South Jersey Transportation Authority official and adjunct sociology professor at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

Why? Casinos improved in-house security, the city’s police force grew and “there has been and always will be a natural ebb and flow in crime patterns, not only in Atlantic City but in the United States,” Mooney said.

The department has worked since September on a more comprehensive study of what crimes happen where, and when, Mooney said. In most cases, the victims are perpetrators who know each other, whether they’re residents or not. Violent crimes usually involve two or more residents of the city or its neighboring towns, Mooney added.

‘The good guys won’

To explain the crime bump after casinos arrived, Whelan invoked former Gov. Brendan Byrne’s quip about Atlantic City in 1976: “There’s nothing to steal.”

“You had a lot more people in town, a lot more crimes of opportunity that just did not exist before,” Whelan said.

Crime decreased, Whelan said, after new community centers provided more recreational outlets for at-risk children. Casinos worked harder to recruit job applicants from low-income neighborhoods. And some of those low-income neighborhoods were demolished.

“As people got off the unemployment cycle and got into jobs, there was less crime,” Whelan said.

The state senator echoed Mooney’s characterization of a better-used police department, and he recalled federal agencies helping local police corral “very sophisticated” street gangs: “The busts had very much a chilling effect on that kind of structured gang activity.”

Street gangs endure, Mooney said, both as branches of national syndicates such as the Bloods and Crips and as locally based groups.

“We do have, unfortunately, a somewhat embedded historical drug-abuse problem in this community,” Mooney said.

In the casinos, however, the gangs fell flat, frozen out by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and the Division of Gaming Enforcement, Marino said at a recent seminar about the gaming era.

“Organized crime lost, period,” Marino said. “The bad guys lost. The good guys won.”

Byrne had publicly warned organized crime when he signed the Casino Control Act: “Keep your filthy hands off Atlantic City! Keep the hell out of our state!”

Unfair formula

Marino contributed a chapter on crime to the recent publication “Casino Gaming in Atlantic City: A Thirty Year Retrospective.” He argued that book authors and journalists deserve blame for Atlantic City being seen as crime-ridden.

Reports of the early 1980s trumpeted the skyrocketing rate of crimes per people, without acknowledging that the true population had changed dramatically, too, Marino said. In 1984, when the city’s year-round population was 37,854, Marino estimated that commuters and tourists drove that up to an average daily population of 175,482.

The crime rate still rose, but far less dramatically, using Marino’s formula.

Vasser emphasized the need to change minds locally, too: “It doesn’t help when our own residents and employees throughout the city tell a visitor, ‘You shouldn’t walk on Pacific Avenue at night,’ or, ‘Don’t step out this casino on foot.’”

Cops on the street

Atlantic City crime crested just as the city’s police force approached its own peak: 432 officers in 1992. From 1978 to that year, the department added an average of 11 officers annually.

“I am a believer in a theory that has never been disproven: that physical presence of police in the community is the biggest deterrent,” Mooney said.

The ranks have gradually shrunk since then, but less notably than has the crime rate. Last year’s force was 374 officers strong.

City police keep casinos and the ACCVA posted about their deployment schedules, Mooney said. He and Vasser talk frequently about how visitors view the city.

The out-of-state focus groups triggered the city’s “Always Turned On” campaign, Vasser said. The authority tracks visitor demographics, but it does not plan any formal campaigns to trumpet the diminishing danger in Atlantic City.

“We don’t make crime, or lack of crime, a marketing component,” Vasser said. “Whenever there is some positive news ... we’ll put out a press release.”

_________________________________________________________

By the numbers

272: City police officers in 1978.

432: Officers in 1992, a record high.

374: Officers in 2008.

644: Violent crimes in 1978.

1,446: Record number of violent crimes, in 1990.

544: Violent crimes in 2000, the feowest since casinos opened.

5,094: Thefts in 1978.

15,169: Record number of thefts, in 1988.

2,927: Thefts in 2008, the fewest since casinos opened.

Contact Eric Scott Campbell:

609-272-7227

ECampbell@pressofac.com

12 comments:

• SgtBill (23) posts 11:08 am

  Gee, and here I thought that spending 6 mos. in a Police Academy was in fact TRAINING and that when you graduated you were ready for law enforcement work. Maybe omygoodness is more knowledgeble then I am, but to the best of my knowledge Atlantic City can not train it's new people for lack of their own Academy within the city. P.S. I was a LOCAL for over 47 year's. Sgt Bill Det. Sergeant Retired Keysville Va.

• NJSucks (20) posts 8:40 am

  Can I get an amen?

• Ohmygoodness (157) posts 12:58 am

  any good AC cop knows how to SOW a call with no report no nothing, heck some guys wont even exit the car, if they show up at all. Now, count the chicks these guys pick up or how many calls they ignore or SOW, now thats a stat!!!!!! The department started something new recently, they dont even train new cops, just throw them on the street after the academy, saves money somehow. Then everybody gets mad when a dog is stolen by a guy who spent 8 months on the street prior to having a specialized unit made up just for him, after not being trained right out of the academy. Go Figure????? U want stats, I doubt it.

• Tin Lizzy (150) posts 1:59 pm

  “Organized crime lost, period,” Marino said. “The bad guys lost. The good guys won.” --- BFD!! The supposed good guys screwed things up FAR WORSE than any silly Mob could do. Under the cover of legality, no less. How many mobsters did US AG Christie jail? FAR FEWER than the 210 convicted political hacks, up to and including Essex County Exec. Jim Treffinger. A.C. ITSELF IS A CRIME. it's a pathetic shadow of its former pathetic self, 'cept now it has hi-rise tissue boxes with armed security and 24/7 electronic surveillance, implanted among the scurvy neighborhoods and broken-looking residents. A.C. can't even compare to Gatlinburg or Branson, except on a few summer holiday weekends. "Crime" did less than "politics" to make A.C. a cheesy seaside dump. P.S.: it's endlessly amusing to hear Mooney, Absecon-residing A.C. police chief lifer, bang on about crime. Can't all his A.C.-stuck cousins and siblings and in-laws make it safe enuff for CHIEF CHUBBY(c) to move back into "the city"????

• gchernya (40) posts 10:56 am

  There is nothing wrong with the way statistics calculated, but it is naive to think about the statictics only without paying attention to the area from where it derived. Areas with a lot of unreported activity cannot be reliably judged by statictics...

• local-1 (38) posts 9:40 am

  we local's know better, we don't need stats!

• SgtBill (23) posts 9:21 am

  You people are so educated about Crime Stats and know so much about Police work it's a wonder that the state and or Fed's even need to compile their stats, they should just call y'all and get them from you. People have a lot to say even when they don't have the stone's to put on an ACPD uniform and become more then just a MOUTH. Bill Hurley Sr. Det. Sergeant Retired Keysville Va.

• gchernya (40) posts 9:13 am

  If drug sale and prostitution is not a crime then statistics are true. Also because of an uderworld culture, about half of the crime is not reported. Sometimes even victims are discoraged from reporting crime that happened to them while going to the drug house, or while using services of the prostitute. Same true for the prostitutes themselves. Robbed drug dealers dont call 911. The statistics is basically body count - stub and beating victims who require medical attention, incidental roberries of unsuspected tourists and such...

• Nikynewark (118) posts 9:11 am

  More put a happy face on the pig nonsense. AC has the most visible crime of any east coast gambling area. Compared to NY,CT, PA, and DE AC is the pits. Visible junkies, skanks and panhandlers. One morning (6:00 AM) my van was surrounded by AC police, guns drawn, arresting the driver in a car next to me. Looked like a swamp version of Newark! What about those prostitute murders. Any arrest's? As to casino security, they are there to protect the casino, NOT THE PUBLIC!

• STONECRAB (47) posts 7:01 am

  LOOK AT THE CALENDAR IT"S NOVENBER .THAT IS A APRIL 1 HEADLINE. ALL THE CITIZENS WITH ANY BRAINCELLS KNOW TO BE DOUBLE LOCKED BEHIND STEEL REINFORCED DOORS BY SUNDOWN. TAKE A STROLL ON THE BOARDS . IF YOUR LUCKY SOME THUG WILL JUST SPIT AND STARE AT YOU. THE A.C. COPS ARE HIDING AND CASINO SECURITY ,NONEXISTENT.

• moverightalong (195) posts 11:46 pm

  Say what you want to say, crime is still very prevelent in AC (AC= All Colors)So much never makes it to the paper I have two top notch scanners not easy to come by with both side of a conversation being heard. Different codes being used also different tongues besides english. I can also monitor cell phone conversations, a real lesson ln it self, people are so ignorant & stupid today!!!!

• beHonest (37) posts 11:38 pm

  When cops are trained to look the other way and are discourage from making reports which in turn lower stats then you have the great low crime rate that is Atlantic City. But the people who live here have seen every neighborhood turn into "slumville" while those responsible blow smoke up our stats!

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