Crime in New Jersey’s largest city has hit a five decade low, with fewer burglaries, carjackings and shootings in 2018 compared to previous years, local and state officials announced Thursday.

U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Craig Carpenito and State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal joined Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose to tout the progress, that they largely attributed to cross-agency collaboration and better forays into local communities.

Overall crime in Newark is down by 15 percent. In 2018, 101 fewer people were shot than the year prior, a 30 percent drop from 2017. Officers last year removed 566 guns off the streets. Homicides dropped only slightly from 72 in 2017 to 70 in 2018. Rapes and aggravated assaults, however, increased.

“One word characterizes the success we’ve experienced and that’s collaboration,” Baraka said. “If someone in your family has been a victim of crime, none of this means anything to you ... these numbers may not make you feel anything but the reality is crime is going down and crime is being reduced in this community and we’re doing it step by step.”

Baraka said the police department’s 1,150 officers are buoyed by sheriff’s officers, state police and other state and county law enforcement agencies who have focused on reducing violent crime in the city. Newark has also rolled out alternative strategies like the The Newark Community Street Team (NCST), a unit of outreach workers created to diffuse violence.

Crime in this city of 280,000 has been on a steady decline in the last five years as Baraka has prioritized rebuilding the city’s police force and added two new police precincts in the last year. Newark, which was a contender for Amazon’s second headquarters, also has long-awaited investment returning in some pockets of the city.

“Any level of economic growth helps,” Baraka said, referring to lower crime rates. “The atmosphere in the city plays a tremendous role.”

Newark also remains under the eye of a federal monitor as part of its consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that found troubling police practices in 2014.

Ambrose said the department is continuing to build relationships in the community and almost all its officers have body-worn cameras.

“We have more interaction with the community but less complaints,” he said.

The new “Citizen Virtual Patrol” program, which allows the public to monitor 126 cameras around city intersections for crime, has resulted in a 4 percent decrease in crime in those areas, Ambrose added.

Newark Police officers shake hands with county and state officials Jan. 3, 2019. (Karen Yi | NJ Advance Media)

Among other crime numbers, Newark reported:

8,135 crime victims in 2018, compared to 9,528 in 2017. There were 40,000 crime victims in 1987.

236 shooting victims in 2018, compared to 337 in 2017

566 guns recovered in 2018, compared to 550 in 2017

165 rapes in 2018, compared to 140 in 2017

715 robberies in 2018, compared to 1,099 in 2017

62 carjackings in 2018, compared to 142 in 2017

1,638 aggravated assaults in 2018, compared to 1,432 in 2017

840 burglaries in 2018, compared to 1,207

“My love affair with this city started 21 years ago when I started my law career with Seton Hall Law,” U.S. Attorney Carpenito said. “This is a different city than the one I walked into in August of 1997 ... we’re doing the same things in other cities but nobody is doing it better than Newark."

[Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the number of rapes in 2018.]

Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.