Standing over a memorial for a man killed last Friday outside a San Jose 7-Eleven store, Terra Roberts pulled her 7-year-old son, Conner, to her side.

Roberts, who lives three blocks from the convenience store where two gunmen shot 22-year-old Rory Park-Pettiford during a 90-minute rampage at six crime scenes, recoiled at the thought of a killing so close to home.

"It feels like things are getting worse all over," said Roberts, a 32-year-old San Jose native who said she visits the store three times a week. "But I'm not sure if it really is, or if that's just my perception. It's just scary to know this happened right here, in our backyard, so that's what is really upsetting to us."

The brazen crime spree included four armed robberies and a gunbattle with police that ended with one suspect wounded and another eluding officers. It recharged a debate over whether crime in San Jose - underscored by eight homicides in 11 days over the summer - is rising at a pace that threatens its identity as one of America's safest big cities.

In light of the recent violence, city officials and police executives again found themselves challenging a perception that the city was entering a new era. Despite a 23 percent increase in major violent crimes during the first half of 2012, and a year-to-date homicide total of 42 - one short of a 15-year high - the per-capita crime rate is still low for a city of 980,000 people, officials said.

Avoiding panic

Michelle McGurk, a policy adviser and spokeswoman for Mayor Chuck Reed, said that although high-profile incidents have shaken residents, officials hope the historical data will put them at ease. In September, police and officials took the unprecedented step of hosting a council meeting to lay out crime statistics from the past 20 years and argue that, given population adjustments, the city is safer than it was two decades ago.

"What we want is for our residents not to panic," McGurk said. "We want them to understand the nature of things that happened. And some of these things are really random and scary, and some of them are unexplainable and could have happened anywhere."

Reed added, "Our strategy to fight this perception is to offer facts."

Dangerous brink?

Yet the sober analysis has been criticized by police union officials, who say city leaders are ignoring signals that suggest the country's 10th-largest city is teetering on a dangerous brink. The union, whose membership has undergone staffing cuts and is embroiled in a lawsuit with the City Council over voter-approved cuts to benefits, has cranked up its displeasure toward city leaders to new rhetorical heights.

Jim Unland, president of the San Jose Police Officers' Association, said that although city officials are telling residents to remain calm, data show that the department - reduced from 1,395 sworn officers three years ago to about 1,050 - is making fewer officer-initiated arrests.

Unland said that in 2010, officers made about 17 initiated arrests per day, compared with about three each day this year. Metro officers, who work to make inroads with street gangs, have signed up fewer confidential informants to feed them intelligence that helps stave off violent feuds. Police enlisted 43 informants this year, down from 102 in 2010.

The numbers, Unland said, show officers are losing their grasp on gangs and are spending more time responding to 911 calls than on preventing crime. The average response time to the city's most urgent 911 calls - rapes, homicides, assaults - has increased to an all-time high of 6.5 minutes this year, from 5.9 minutes in 2007.

"It's the most bizarre city in the world when it comes to downplaying the crime rate," Unland said. "It's like this city just doesn't want to acknowledge there's violence and it's on the increase here."

At a news conference Monday, police officials declined to say whether having more cops on the street could have ended last Friday's crime spree before it turned fatal.

String of robberies

Police received their first call around 7:40 p.m., when suspect Jonathan Wilbanks, 26, and a second man allegedly robbed a pizza parlor in East San Jose. From there, the two robbed a gas station, a Jack in the Box and a day spa, police said.

They arrived at the 7-Eleven on the west side of town around 9 p.m., where police say the men killed Park-Pettiford as they tried to steal his car.

About 10 minutes later, a police cruiser pulled in two cars behind the suspects' vehicle at a stoplight, where the pair got out and opened fired at the officer.

Wilbanks surrendered later that night after holing up in a resident's home. The second man ran off and is still at large.

Assistant Chief Rikki Goede said officers were left to respond to a trail of crime scenes, which got in the way of the manhunt for the second suspect.

"It was a perfect storm in terms of resources," Goede said. "I'm not going to say it didn't impact our ability to investigate. Anyone would agree more resources would have helped us."

Reed and police officials emphasized the quality of their police officers over their quantity, and the positive relationship residents have with the department.

In 2011, the city's violent crime rate was 330 incidents per 100,000 residents, half San Francisco's rate of 659 incidents per 100,000. Oakland has the state's highest violent crime rate, 1,682 incidents per 100,000 residents.

Sgt. Jason Dwyer, a spokesman for the San Jose department, said the officer who took fire from the two suspects and suffered minor wounds had nevertheless led the chase for the men.

The act of heroism led to Wilbanks' capture and inspired his department colleagues, Dwyer said.

"From our perspective," Dwyer said, "I think the taxpayers got their money's worth Friday night."