Austin’s violent crime rate down 6% in 2015
But rate increased 7% in metro area outside city, according to analysis.
FBI crime statistics released this week show that the violent crime rate in Austin dropped in 2015, but the surrounding cities saw a marked increase, with the suburbs moving in the same direction as the national trend.
Taking population growth into account, per capita violent crime rates in Austin fell 6 percent from 2014 to 2015. In contrast, the average violent crime rate for cities in the metro area outside of Austin increased 7 percent, according to an American-Statesman analysis of uniform crime data compiled by the FBI.
Put together, the rates in Austin and its suburbs nearly cancel each other out, showing a slight overall decline in violent crimes of 1 percent for the five-county Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area. That decrease went against changes to the national crime rate, which showed a 3 percent increase in such violent crimes as rapes and murders and, according to experts, was driven by a spike of violence in several large cities.
But those numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, experts said. A one-year change, even across the nation, doesn’t mean
a crime wave has begun.
“There does seem to be an uptick in some types of crimes, but nobody is sure if it is statistically significant or just a blip,” said Kim Rossmo, a Texas State University professor who has researched geographical crime patterns. “You see fluctuations all the time.”
The FBI classifies murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults as violent crimes. Misdemeanor assaults in Texas — typically family violence assaults — aren’t counted.
Property crime rates in 2015 fell across the board for the U.S., Texas, Austin and nearly all surrounding cities, according to the FBI data.
Even with a marked uptick in violent crime in Austin’s suburbs and exurbs, the data show that people were far more likely to be a victim of violent crime inside the city limits. Austin had a rate of 373 victims per 100,000 residents in 2015, while the rate outside of the city was 213 per 100,000 residents.
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo credited the hard work of his officers for bringing down the 2015 rate, with the caveat that it has gone up 7 percent so far this year.
“We’re still one of the safest cities, as it relates to this current year,” Acevedo said. “A lot of cities are seeing an increase in violent crime. We still have to keep things in perspective.”
This year’s increase, paired with the fatal shooting of five police officers in Dallas, led Acevedo to institute a temporary emergency staffing program this summer. That program has ended, and Acevedo said he is already seeing the spike blunted by a sustained increase in officers on the streets.
While the combined violent crime rate in Austin’s suburbs showed an increase, it remained under the average crime rate for all other nonmajor cities in Texas, the Statesman’s analysis found.
Round Rock, Austin’s largest suburb, saw an uptick in violent crime per capita of 5.7 percent. But violent crime data stretching back 10 years show a much flatter rate with small ups and downs depending on the year, according to Round Rock planning manager Rick White, who conducts crime analysis for the city.
“The big takeaway is overall there is a slight uptick in crime for our city and that continues when you control for population, but the overall trend for crime in Round Rock is a downward slope,” White said.
Meanwhile, the violent crime rate in San Marcos jumped 7 percent. The city had five homicides in 2015, a “clear standout” in crime data that skewed the numbers, San Marcos Police Chief Chase Stapp said.
“That was a real outlier that hurt our violent crime statistics a lot,” Stapp said.
Some of last year’s homicides were drug-related, and periodic spikes have occurred in the past, Stapp said. In 2014, no homicides were reported in San Marcos.
Deciding whether a change in crime rates is an actual trend is a difficult task, and experts continue to argue over the causes of peaks and valleys in crime data decades after the fact.
Rossmo said several factors can skew data and called some statistics “noise.”
Annual population estimates, which play a key factor in determining crime rates, can differ from agency to agency. Police-sponsored programs aimed at a particular kind of crime can show a spike in criminal activity, when really all the data shows is that enforcement has improved, he said.
And then there’s the fact that a large portion of crimes aren’t reported. Homicides are almost always captured, but many sexual assaults are not. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network estimates only about 35 percent of rapes are reported to police.