Property and violent crimes in Ogden decreased by nearly 20 percent from 2017 to 2018, the largest drop in city history, officials announced at a Wednesday news conference.
Police Chief Randy Watt said it’s hard to point to a single reason for the dip shown by statistics for Part 1 crimes, which include homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, theft and arson. He said the drop could be a result of the police department reviewing and changing its practices after a nearly 11 percent increase in those types of crimes from 2015 into 2016.
Or, he said, Ogden being selected in April as pilot city for the Project Safe Neighborhood program, which allocates federal resources to help curb crime, could have played a role.