It’s safer in Wisconsin’s largest city than it was five years ago. Milwaukee Police issued their 2011 crime statistics this week, showing violent crimes like homicide and rape were down a healthy 23 percent since 2007. But police say high scrap metal prices have caused a jump in burglaries and auto thefts over the past year. Property crimes like thefts and arson were also down by almost 21 percent. But burglaries rose during the five-year period by around six-and-a-half percent. Police Chief Ed Flynn doesn’t believe that factory workers become robbers when the economy went bad – but he says more people will commit crimes if they don’t believe there’s a real victim. Flynn cites foreclosures as an example. He says neighborhoods suffer devastating effects when foreclosed houses are “ripped up and gutted apart.” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett says the city has about 4800 abandoned homes, and he calls them “attractive nuisances.”