Why is Garfield, New Jersey so murdery?

Garfield is a small town in Bergen County, northern New Jersey, in the commuter belt where the show keeps finding quiet places within an easy ride of Manhattan. Fair Lawn is described as about thirty five minutes from the city, Hanover Township forty, Ramsey an hour. The cases sit close together: Garfield itself at zero miles, Fair Lawn four, Demarest ten, Ramsey thirteen, Hanover and Chatham Townships seventeen, Denville twenty, Woodbridge Township twenty four. Eight towns, one corner of one state.

The years spread as widely as the miles, from a 1971 case in Hanover Township to a 2010 case in Denville, taking in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s. No single episode carries the total. Episode 205 has three victims, most of the rest one or two, and episode 619, the town's own, two. Fourteen murders across eight episodes is an accumulation, not one terrible case.

What this counts is the show's caseload, not the state's crime figures. James and Jimmie choose the towns, and they keep choosing these.