If you’re one of those folks who tend to get your news primarily from the evening broadcasts of local television stations, or the tour diaries of Oregonian indie bands, you can be forgiven for missing the biggest crime story of the year for the District: namely, that there’s a lot less of it. We fretted along with the rest of the city back in late spring and early summer that the downward trend in the city’s crime had reached an endpoint, but one crime emergency and several very quiet months later, the city is on pace to close 2006 with some of the lowest numbers in key crime categories in decades.

With just a few weeks left in the year, total crime numbers are down in most of the city’s seven police districts, even in the first and seventh districts, and up slightly in the third — though the increase is far smaller than what one might have expected given the crime statistics through July. While property crimes remain an issue in the first and third districts, which contain the most dense and rapidly developing neighborhoods in the city, the violence associated with those crimes has leveled off, a marked departure from the situation during the first half of the year.

For the city as a whole, sexual assaults are up slightly, but robberies are down 5 percent for the year, assaults with a deadly weapon are down 2 percent, thefts are down 3 percent, and stolen cars are down 11 percent. Homicides in 2006 have plummeted 43 percent in the fourth police district, 32 percent in the seventh, and 28 percent in the fifth. Perhaps most notably, Washington is currently on pace to record 163 homicides in 2006, down from 196 in 2005, 242 in 2000, and 479 back in 1991. The drops are more remarkable still considering the recent revelation that D.C.’s population is once again increasing.

While we should probably feel good about the city’s longterm prospects for increased safety, the summer surge in crime should remind us that policies still matter. Let’s hope incoming police chief Cathy Lanier is able to continue improving public safety in the District in a responsible fashion.