The Cambridge Police Department's annual crime report released in early March revealed that crime rates for the city were the lowest since statistics began to be kept in the 1960s.

In 1996, 4,951 crimes were committed in Cambridge, down 11.9 percent from 5,620 in 1995.

Nevertheless, many Harvard students saw and heard about more violent crimes in and around campus this year.

On Sept. 7, a stranger-on-stranger rape occurred in a Riverside-area home just blocks from Mather House. After stealing some jewelry and a Camcorder, the intruder entered the woman's bedroom where she was asleep with her child, forced her at knifepoint into another room and raped her, said Cambridge Police Department Sergeant Joseph J. McSweeney.

Mather residents were understandably unnerved.

"It's not safe. Rarely do I see a police car near Mather House," said a Mather resident.

Only five days later, a 59-year-old homeless man was hit over the head with a brick by an unknown assailant and left to bleed in the Peabody Terrace visitor's parking lot. Peabody Terrace is an apartment complex located approximately a block away from Mather House.

Megan L. Peimer '97, former co-president of the Radcliffe Union of Students, said the issue of safety was particularly important for women.

She cited the case of a female jogging on Weeks Bridge over the Charles River early this academic year and was raped in broad daylight.

Information on the incident was not released until six weeks after the incident.

"When we heard about the assault, we were outraged," Peimer said.

In October, undergraduates were plagued with a string of violent crimes directly targeting Harvard students.

Half of the incidents occurred in the poorly-lit and sparsely populated area between the Yard and the Quad houses.

Two Cabot House residents were attacked in Cambridge Common at 2 a.m., and a group of undergraduates was threatened at knifepoint on Walker Street just a block from the Quad.

"Lighting on the route from the Yard to the Quad isn't great in a lot of areas," said Elizabeth A. Haynes '98, a longtime campus safety advocate. "There needs to be a blue [security] phone every block."

The Yard was not immune to violent crime either--two students were robbed at knifepoint in October as well.

The first robbery took place through a window of a room in Wigglesworth Hall early one morning. The second occured outside Lamont Library in the middle of the afternoon.

The University responded by installing 39 new lights and eight emergency phones in and around the Yard in March.

These crimes came on the heel of reforms undertaken by the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) and the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD).

HUPD Chief Francis D. "Bud" Riley initiated bike patrols and other measures this summer in an attempt to fully integrate police into the Harvard community.

Ronnie Watson, who became CPD's police commissioner this year, put effective community policing at the top of his agenda as well.

Watson said his goals include improving communication between officers and city residents, making the department more accessible and sending officers to various community meetings.

Watson said he will initiate quarterly meetings in each of the city's 13 neighborhoods, in which comments and complaints can be addressed.

Officials say these changes have made their units more responsive to the Cambridge community at large.

Unfortunately, there have been several high-visibility incidents in the city the department has had to respond to.

On Sept. 21, a man broke into a woman's apartment in the vicinity of First, Fifth, Binney and Cambridge streets and violently raped her.

Halfway across town on the same day, Margo Beckers was arrested for stabbing an unidentified female in the CambridgeSide Galleria Mall in an argument over a man.

On Nov. 22, a 51-year-old homeless man named Laurence Cooper was fatally stabbed repeatedly in the heart and throat at 6:40 p.m. on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Ellery Street.

And on April 19th in the heart of Harvard Square, 34-year-old Store 24 employee Russell T. Yeager allegedly stabbed Robert Gayner after arguing with him and is also accused of injuring innocent passerby Shana Dirke when she attempted to intervene.