Piedmont Crime

“Crime and the perception of crime is another big picture question. Crime rates are a fraction of what they were 35 years ago, both nationally and in the Bay Area.”    Piedmont Exedra

Is that true?  The figure below shows violent and property crime data for Piedmont, Oakland and San Jose for the past 40 years ( California DOJ ). First, rates for Oakland and San Jose are scaled to appear on the same axis as Piedmont – for both cities and both types of crime, rates in those cities are 100-fold greater than Piedmont.  Rates for Oakland and San Jose declined over that time period by 25%, by 40% when the COVID spike is factored out.  For Piedmont, the data show the crime rate to be fairly flat but with cycles.

Piedmont has a much lower crime rate than the neighboring cities and that does give the perception that the town is safe but as the data show, as goes Oakland, so goes Piedmont. 

One “resident” within Piedmont that does not share that perception is Ace Hardware on Grand Avenue.  That one location has probably been subjected to more shoplifting, robberies and forced entries in the past two years that over all its history at the location.  If you don’t believe that, speak to the store manager.  He is frustrated by the number of criminals coming to his store but also by the number of them getting away thanks to Piedmont Police’s pursuit policy (they don’t).  Strong-arm after hour break-ins happen routinely at the store, instantly tripping alarms and cameras and still the criminals get away.  The store is adjacent to a public safety camera on the Wildwood Ave cross-light which monitors vehicles and pedestrians coming into Piedmont on Grand and is used to collect surveillance of vehicles associated with crimes in town. 

Since many of those crimes are happening at the nearby Ace Hardware, maybe it’s time to train the camera on that location and have our new dispatcher team monitor the night-time activity there.