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GREENSBORO — For all the problems a consultant identified in a review of the police department delivered to the City Council on Monday , one important fact stands out.

Greensboro’s police excel at their most fundamental mission: enforcing the law and keeping people safe.

The crime rate has fallen for the past 10 years.

Greensboro police solve more crimes than the national average and more than other departments of similar size.

They respond to the most urgent calls quickly, often much more quickly than they get credit for, according to the consultant’s report.

“It all goes back to the officers in the streets,” Chief Tim Bellamy said. “They just have pride in the job that they do and want to protect the citizens of Greensboro.”

The City Council hired consultant Carroll Buracker to do a comprehensive evaluation of the police department after a spate of homicides last winter.

Overall crime has increased slightly in the past five years, according to data the consultant compiled from federal Uniform Crime Reports . But 2005, 2006 and 2007 each had fewer crimes reported than in 1995, according to the report.

At the same time, the city’s population has increased at a faster rate than the number of crimes, causing the crime rate to decline by nearly one-fourth between 1995 and 2007 , according to the report.

In 2006 , Greensboro police cleared 19.8 percent of serious crimes, higher than the national average of 19.3 percent and the average for cities Greensboro’s size, 18 percent , according to Buracker’s analysis.

Last year, the department did even better, solving 22.9 percent of serious crimes, “a substantial increase in efficiency,” according to the report.

Ralph Johnson, co-chairman of Concerned Citizens of Northeast Greensboro, said solving crimes is only part of making the city safer. He was concerned that although overall crime rates are declining, juvenile crime rates continue to go up.

“The police have solved some of the crimes,” Johnson said. “We need to take a look at how we can take this child and keep him from even putting a gun in his hand.”

Bellamy said he is proud that police officers have been able to overlook years of public criticism and continue to do a good job, but he hopes to be able to do more.

“If we’re doing a good job now, just think what we could do if we had more resources,” Bellamy said. “You can always do better with more.”

But even with existing resources, Buracker gave the police department excellent marks for responding quickly to the most urgent calls for service.

Police are often evaluated on the time it takes an officer to get to a call. Response times to life-threatening calls are especially scrutinized. Many departments, including the Greensboro Police Department, use a six-minute response time as a standard.

Buracker said that for several of the city’s patrol zones, officers’ average response time was about four minutes, a range that he called “excellent” in his report.

Buracker’s report recommended changing aspects of police record keeping that obscure the amount of time it takes officers to respond to the most urgent calls.

One of those aspects is the way records are kept on mental health commitment calls. These calls, which require lots of travel and long waits for officers, are ranked as “high priority,” along with calls that involve life-threatening situations.

As such, they dilute average response time to other emergency calls.

“This report shows it’s not that bad,” Bellamy said. “It just felt good to know the things we’ve been through and the perception of some citizens, we are still motivating our subordinates to do a good job with the resources we have.”

Contact Sonja Elmquist at 373-7090 or sonja.elmquist @news-record.com