BY FREDA MIKLIN
STAFF WRITER
With all the talk about increased crime rates, The Villager decided to look at the actual crimes numbers for two of the cities in our area from January through July of this year.
Cherry Hills Village
We started with Cherry Hills Village, where theft of items from cars, most often unlocked, saw the largest year-over-year increase from 2022 to 2023, going from 16 to 33, through the first seven months of the year. A significant number of these thefts from motor vehicles, according to CHVPD, occurred in church parking lots.
The actual theft of motor vehicles in CHV went down from 11 to five during the same seven-month period in 2023 compared to 2022.
Of the five vehicles stolen, CHVPD reports stated that three were unlocked and had keys inside. Reports did not say whether the other two vehicles that were stolen were unlocked or had keys accessible.
All thefts combined in CHV increased from 34 in 2022 to 52 in 2023 between January and July.
Burglaries increased slightly from 12 in 2022 to 14 in 2023. Since burglary is most often the crime of forced entry for the purpose of committing theft, one could deduce that most of the 52 thefts from January to July 2023 did not involve forced entry. That is entirely possible because a theft can mean that something can’t be found that one thought they had. It might have been stolen, but it could also have been misplaced.
Greenwood Village
Although Greenwood Village borders Cherry Hills Village and both cities have some affluent areas, there is little similarity between the two cities in the factors that impact crime.
While GV’s population of 15,365 is only 1.4 times that of CHV’s 6,312, GV’s population swells to over 50,000 every weekday because of the number of people who come to work in its many offices and other businesses. GV also has the largest public high school in the state on a combined campus that has up to 7,000 people in it every school day.
There is also Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater that hosts 33 concerts every year in a venue that seats 19,000.
Added to those factors, 225,000 vehicles go through GV on I-25 daily, where they might have accidents, traffic issues, etc.
With its many restaurants and bars, GV is home to hundreds of liquor licenses. People who drink alcohol are more likely to get into trouble than those who don’t.
GV Crime Data
For the first seven months of 2023, auto thefts in GV decreased from 93 to 71, compared to the same period in 2022.
Several years ago, the city began to track the number of stolen cars it recovers within its borders. That number dropped from 122 in the first seven months of 2022 to 97 for the same period in 2023.
Thefts in GV have remained at virtually the same rate, 68 per month, for a total of approximately 475, between January and July of 2022 and 2023. Burglaries, the act of entering a premises without permission in order to commit another crime, occurred at the same rate in both years, 8 per month, or approximately 56.
As is the case for CHV, since the number of burglaries is one-twelfth far fewer than the number of thefts reported, it seems likely that most of the thefts did not involve forced entry.
fmiklin.villager@gmail.com