Greg Beato: Do Dropping Crime Rates Mean We're Better People? Or
Has Life Just Gotten Easier?  Are the nation's muggers too busy
updating their Facebook pages to maintain the pace set by
previous generations of harder-working criminals? Have our
burglars finally run out of closet space to store new loot? Last
month, the FBI released its 2010 Preliminary Annual Uniform
Crime Report, and the numbers suggest America is safer, more
serene, and apparently better-padlocked than it has been in
nearly 40 years. Nationwide, violent crime dropped 5.5 percent
last year, property crimes were down 2.8 percent, and even the
Jonas Brothers were not stealing as many hearts as they had been
in 2009.  In Connecticut, and in the northeast in general, the
picture is somewhat varied. For example, New Haven's murder
count doubled from 11 in 2009 to 22 in 2010, and it also
experienced a slight uptick in property crimes, increasing from
7,113 in 2009 to 7,180 last year. At the same time, among
Connecticut's five largest cities, it a