Violent crime stays on rise
Austin mirrors upward trend in state, nation, FBI report shows.
The violent crime rate in Austin has been on the rise since 2016, and new data from the FBI shows the city is no outlier.
Violent crime is trending upward across the state and country. The FBI’s 2016 Uniform Crime Report, which tracks national crime statistics and trends, shows that the violent crime rate in Texas rose to 449.8 incidents per 100,000 people, marking a 5.3 percent rate increase over 2015.
The FBI includes the offenses of murder and non-negligent homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault in its definition of violent crime. The report compiles crime statistics from law enforcement departments around the country and calculates per capita crime rates.
Nationwide, the violent crime rate rose from 373 in 2015 to 386 in 2016, marking a 3.4 percent increase.
The national violent crime rate had cratered to 361.6 in 2014, and before that, it had had been steadily falling since the late 1990s.
The statistics indicated a slight increase from 2004 to 2005, but the downward trend continued until the first upticks were recorded in 2015. Although 2016 marks the second straight year of increases, the numbers are still low compared with those posted over the past two decades.
In Texas, the largest spikes were for the crimes of murder and rape, which saw a 10.5 percent and 8.5 percent increase, respectively.
Austin’s 39 homicides in 2016 accounted for an increase of more than 60 percent over the 24 recorded the year before. Austin police records showed an overall increase of 11.3 percent in the number of violent crimes in 2016 as well.
At a city of Austin Public Safety Commission meeting at the beginning of September, interim Police Chief Brian Manley said violent crime was up 3 percent through July 2017 compared with the first seven months of 2016.
Manley has said focusing on data and aligning Police Department resources where challenges
spring up are helping his department get a handle on crime.
Last week, after three attacks on runners on and around popular hike-and-bike trails downtown, the department announced plans to shift overnight officers to the area before dawn, when the reported attacks all happened.
Before that, the department increased officer presence and investigative work to the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, where synthetic drugs were crip- pling many members of the homeless community.
Assistant Chief Troy Gay said early in September that one of the best ways to prevent crime is to have a visible police presence, and as the Police Department continues its push toward becoming fully staffed by the end of the year, that presence will go up.
“Efforts in recruiting and a training plan that we put together is going to have a very positive impact on staffing for our department, which will also have positive results in our response times and our crime rate,” Gay said.