By Julie Shapiro and Murray Weiss
LOWER MANHATTAN — Lower Manhattan's falling crime rate has earned it a reputation as one of the safest neighborhoods in the city.
But new statistics gathered by DNAinfo.com show that the neighborhood actually has one of the highest per capita crime rates in the city, fueled in part by a staggering 1,065 grand larcenies last year.
The 1st Precinct, which covers the area south of Houston Street on the west side and south of the Brooklyn Bridge on the east side, also recently saw an increase in shootings (four in 2010 compared to one in 2009) and rapes (six in 2010 compared to four in 2009). One of last year's shootings was the Sept. 29 murder of Max Moreno, a 21-year-old Pace University student, inside his Gold Street apartment after an apparent drug deal.
These numbers led DNAinfo.com's new Crime & Safety Report to rank lower Manhattan as the 63rd safest of 69 neighborhoods in the city, based on all major crimes committed.
That finding surprised Downtown residents, who said they like their neighborhood precisely because it has so little crime.
"I've never felt uncomfortable living here," said writer Chelsea-Lyn Rudder, 27, who has lived in the Financial District for the past 10 years.
"I've always gotten the feeling that Downtown is one of the safest areas of the city [and] it's somewhat surprising if the statistics don't indicate that."
In terms of violent crime — murder, robbery, felony assault and rape — DNAinfo.com's analysis found that Downtown is 14th safest in the city out of 69 neighborhoods. In terms of property crime, however, lower Manhattan was just 66th safest.
Part of the reason lower Manhattan fared so poorly in DNAinfo.com's rankings is because the neighborhood has 309,500 workers that commute into the Financial District each day and some 9 million tourists that visit each year, according to figures from the Downtown Alliance.
But the ranking weighed the number of crimes against the number of residents: 66,679, according to the 2010 census.
Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1, said the rankings are flawed because it just focuses on residents, and uses census numbers that may have undercounted the population.
"I don't think you can have an accurate picture without looking at the number of people working in and visiting the neighborhood," Menin said, adding that she felt entirely safe raising her three young sons in lower Manhattan.
DNAinfo.com did not include commuters and tourists in each neighborhood's population count because census data provides the most accurate and comprehensive population data available.
"The only way to compare violence from one city to another, one neighborhood to another, is by using per capita measurements," said Thomas Repetto, the president of the nonprofit Citizens Crime Commission from 1979 to 2005, who reviewed DNAinfo.com's Crime & Safety Report.
"When you put out a crime report, neighborhoods that do well will say this is terrific. Those who do less well will complain."
Liz Williams, second vice president of the 1st Precinct Community Council and a longtime Financial District resident, said she, too, feels safe in the neighborhood.
But Williams also felt that the daily influx of tourists accounts for many of the crimes in lower Manhattan, particularly the thefts of unattended laptops and pocketbooks from bars and coffee shops.
And more than half of all crimes south of Chambers Street occur during the day, suggesting that the commuters and tourists are more likely than residents to be victims, the Downtown Alliance business improvement district said.
Williams, who has lived on Beaver Street for 15 years and has two teenage children, said she didn't always feel safe walking around lower Manhattan before 9/11. But she now feels comfortable at all hours because of the neighborhood's increased police presence.
In all, crime in lower Manhattan fell 8 percent in 2010. And as of last month it was down 7 percent so far in 2011, according to Deputy Inspector Edward Winski, commanding officer of the 1st Precinct.
