April 7-13 is National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. In conjunction with recognizing that week, all this month The Record is reporting on trends in crime in areas of Warren County.The Warren County Sheriff’s Department, which patrols the small towns and rural areas of Warren County, reported steady drops in theft between 2016 and 2018, and a large drop in serious assault cases in 2018 compared to the year before.Crime data for the sheriff’s department comes from universal crime reports submitted to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The reports show that the number of larceny thefts (the stealing of anything other than motor vehicles) has declined in the last three years. There were at least 140 confirmed thefts in 2016, dropping to under 110 in 2018.Although changes in crime data can be the result of variations from year to year, Warren County Sheriff Kevin Harrison points to the visible presence of deputies on patrol and investigating crimes as a factor in the decline.“People looking for quick, easy targets, if you start having that reputation (for active enforcement), they’re going to look somewhere else,” Harrison said.The decline in thefts has been accompanied by a slight decrease in the number of burglaries in the last three years as well. Vehicle thefts, however, have gone up slightly from 19 in 2016, to 25 in 2018.Harrison said a focus of the sheriff’s department has been using traffic stops as a means of catching people who are traveling with stolen goods or illegal drugs. Locating and arresting culprits engaging in an organized series of thefts also makes a periodic impact on the number of future crimes, the sheriff said.“Last year there were a couple instances where it was an organized group going out working the rural areas,” Harrison said. Authorities in Warren County and St. Charles County eventually located the thieves and recovered many stolen items, he said.Lt. Scott Schoenfeld, one of the lead investigators for the sheriff’s department, said 90 percent of thefts are drug related, and that drugs are also involved in many violent crimes.“One overarching trend I’ve noticed is the amount of criminal activity, especially when it comes to property crime, that’s directly motivated by opioid addiction,” Schoenfeld said, explaining that many thefts are due to people seeking quick cash to buy drugs.Data on drug crimes is tricky to track and compare between law enforcement departments because drug possession is often a secondary charge to the more serious offenses, like theft and assault, tracked by universal crime reporting. But the data on arrests for which the possession, sale or manufacture of drugs was the primary offense shows a signification variation from year to year.The sheriff’s department made around 122 drug-motivated arrests in 2016, almost 160 drug arrests in 2017, and 140 such arrests in 2018, the vast majority of which were for possession, according to the crime report data. The number of arrests changes along with trends in drug usage and where the drugs are coming from, Harrison explained.The sheriff said drugs also tend to be involved in violent crime, especially domestic assaults. Domestic assaults and drug possession are the most frequent criminal cases handled by the sheriff’s department, often arising from the same incidents, Harrison commented.The sheriff said data tends to show a higher number of domestic assault cases in Warren County than some of its neighbors. But he explained that might be because of higher reporting from victims, or because other law enforcement agencies might report minor assaults as “peace disturbances.”In the overall data for aggravated assaults, both domestic and non-domestic, Warren County remained steady from 2016 to 2017 with over 60 cases, plummeting to 32 assaults in 2018. Aggravated assault is defined as an attack with intent to inflict severe injury.Harrison said the drop in severe assault cases is more likely a random variation than the result of sheriff department patrols. Those kinds of crimes tend to be based on individual factors such as personal relationships, and are difficult to predict, he explained.Harrison added that the sheriff’s department does have known individuals and locations that present a higher risk for future assault cases.Overall, the sheriff said future crime trends will be impacted by the growing population moving to Warren County from outside areas. He said more crimes are being reported in rural areas where they weren’t common before.But the sheriff’s department is also fielding more patrol deputies thanks to a tax increase approved by voters last year, Harrison commented. He hopes that will be a deterrent to criminals.“Realistically speaking, (with) the population that’s leaving the city and coming out here, we’re going to see increases in all crime,” Harrison said. “That’s just a negative aspect of population growth. Our challenge is to be ready to deal with it, and to encourage the community to stay engaged with us.”Local crime notes