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Page 1 of 3  Last March, Arlington police say, a gang member from Somerville robbed and shot a rival on Henderson Street, just over the border in town. Chief Fred Ryan says that the gang members crossed into Arlington because there are fewer police here than in neighboring communities. "We have been told by some informants that burglars have chosen to target Arlington for that very reason," Ryan wrote in an e-mail Nov. 5.
As rates of violent crime fall in Boston and other larger cities,
smaller municipalities, including Arlington, have reported increases in
aggravated assaults and robberies, according to figures compiled by
police chiefs in 25 of the state's largest law-enforcement agencies.
YourArlington has received the 28-page report after town residents said earlier stories in The Boston Globe lacked detail. Read the report in full here >> (large .pdf file).
 CHIEF FRED RYAN: Arlington remains safe.
Chief cites relative lack of number of officers to deal with issue:
Boston Globe, 11/4; page one follow-up, 11/5
The numbers from the Massachusetts Major Cities Chiefs comparing crime for the first six months of 2006 and 2007, show:
* Arlington is listed at 25th on a list of Bay State cities and towns, with 610 total crimes in 2006 and '07. (Boston is No. 1, with 31,506 total crimes.)
* Arlington reported 256 crimes in 2006 and 354 the next year, an increase of 38 percent. (In those years, total crimes reported in Boston dropped 3 percent.)
* Arlington ranked 24th in total crimes per 1,000 residents, as the count rose from 5.74 in '06 to 7.94 in '07.
* Arlington ranked 24th in violent crime, with 22 such incidents were recorded in 2006 and 38 the next year, a 38 percent rise. Note that Boston had 69 murders in those two years, and Arlington had one, last March.
* The number of rape in Arlington declined, from seven to four, in the two years the report covers. By comparison, Boston recorded 258 rapes and Springfield 114.
* Arlington is ranked 25th in robberies, with a total of eight. That compares with 2,444 in Boston and 667 in Springfield. The number of robberies in Arlington jumped 200 percent, but that's because of the relatively small numbers of them -- from two in 2006 to six the next year.
* As for assaults, Arlington saw the numbers increase 108 percent -- from 13 in 2006 to 27 the following year.
* Assaults with firearms in town rose from none to three in 2007. Boston recorded 619, 1 22 percent decline, and Springfield 244, a 36 percent drop.
* Burglaries here rose 97 percent -- from 77 to 152 -- while larcenies remained the same, at 142 each year. Motor-vehicle thefts increased 27 percent, from 15 to 19.
Overall, the figures showed the total number of violent crimes for all 25 localities fell by 5 percent. That could signal an improving trend in a state that, since 1999, faced rises in homicides and shootings. The number of shootings and fatal shootings in Massachusetts nearly doubled, from 1,302 in 1999 to 2,250 in 2005, federal data say.
In Arlington, this year's Henderson Street case remains unresolved. Ryan notes that the victim survived but is not cooperating with investigators.
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