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OTTUMWA, IOWA -- The Ottumwa Police Department has released its 2010 annual report.

The report contains crime statistics for the past year and addresses funding and organizational issues within the department.

Over the next week, KTVO and Heartlandconnection.com will take a closer look at that report.

This year's reports compares Ottumwa's overall crime rate with that of several other Iowa cities of comparable size. That is a population between 24-thousand and 30-thousand. Ottumwa's official population prior to the 2010 census was 24,998.

Cities included in the comparison are Fort Dodge, Marshalltown, Marion, Burlington, Clinton, Urbandale and Mason City.

The crime rate is recorded as the number of crimes per 100,000 population.

The crime rate in Ottumwa for 2009, the last year numbers have been fcompiled, is 351.6.

This reflects the second lowest number since 1999, and down substantially from the decade high of 459.7 in 2006.

Here is the rest of the list.

• Fort Dodge 456.3
• Clinton 375.5
• Burlington 374
• Ottumwa 351.6
• Marshalltown 344.6
• Mason City 250.3
• Urbandale 132.2
• Marion 130.6

According to the FBI crime index legend, A low crime rate is between 50-350 crimes per 100,000. A moderate crime rate is between 350-700.

The crime rate can be an useful tool of analysis, but the report does caution the following.

The number of reported crimes can vary widely based on a variety of factors.

For instance, a city could have a low crime rate because the attitude of the city's Police Department and citizens is one where local level crimes like petty vandalism go unreported.

The inverse is true of course, a city could have a high crime rate because the police department and or the citizens are very pro-active in reporting even the most minor of offenses.