FBI: Reports of property crimes in county up in 2015

The number of people reporting property crimes in Clark County grew by about 5 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the latest national crime statistics released Monday by the FBI.

According to the FBI’s 2015 Crime in the United States report, the number of burglaries, thefts, and vehicle thefts reported to county law enforcement officials (not including the Washington State Patrol or Washington State University Vancouver) grew to 10,119 in 2015 from 9,604 the year before.

Reported property crimes in Vancouver went from 5,259 to 5,554.

However, the property crime report rate has been declining over time. From 2005 to 2015, the rate of reported property crimes per 100,000 Clark County residents — using population estimates from the state Office of Financial Management — was down almost 41 percent. In Vancouver, the rate has dropped about 36 percent.

Nationwide, property crime reports were down. Reports dropped 2.6 percent in 2015, which the FBI said is the 13th year they’ve declined. All told, property crime victims suffered an estimated $14.3 billion in losses in 2015, excluding arson damages.

The FBI reminded users that the report’s data often aren’t helpful for comparing agencies or areas, save with the broadest of strokes, and warned against reading too much into the information. Individual communities’ geography, demographics and other factors can all affect how crime manifests in one city compared to another. Also, not every crime is reported.

In Vancouver, there were 3,247 reports of property crime per 100,000 residents in 2015, while Seattle had 5,552 reports per 100,000 residents. Washington as a whole had 3,464 reports per 100,000 residents; the U.S. as a whole had 2,487 reports per 100,000 residents, according to the FBI.

Countywide, there were 2,240 reports of property crime per 100,000 residents, using population estimates from OFM.

Violent crimes

The Crime in the United States reports draw from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report index, which tracks eight crimes. The violent crimes it tracks are murder or non-negligent manslaughter; rape; robbery; and aggravated assault. For property crimes, it keeps track of burglary; larceny or theft; motor vehicle theft; and arson.

Taking information from all the county’s law enforcement agencies, reports of violent crime were up countywide, according to the FBI, rising from 953 to 1,100 from 2014 to 2015. A spike of more than 100 aggravated assaults accounted for much of the change.

In Vancouver, reports jumped from 577 in 2014 to 671 in 2015. Much of that increase came from a spike in assaults.

Using the OFM’s population data, violent crime reporting rates in the county were up in 2015, to 253 per 100,000 residents from 215. In Clark County, that rate is down more than 5 percent over the past 10 years.

Vancouver’s rate grew from 342 to 392 reports per 100,000 people. In the past 10 years, the rate of violent crimes in the city has hovered between about 345 and 400 per 100,000.

The violent crime rate in the United States was 372 reported offenses per 100,000.

Nationwide, the number of murders increased by more than 10 percent from 2015 to 2015, and violent crime overall rose nearly 4 percent.

Another of the FBI’s regular counts, the National Incident-Based Reporting System, tracked 59 crime categories as of 2014, but fewer law enforcement agencies use the standard. Since Monday’s report can be less specific, the numbers can give the wrong impression.

For instance, the Uniform Crime Report only counts aggravated assaults, which typically involve a weapon, but the incident-based reporting system records those as well as simple assaults.

The Vancouver Police Department participates in the incident-based system. Last year’s Crime in the United States report, for instance, said violent crime in Vancouver appeared to have increased from 2013 to 2014.

However, when comparing with much larger pool of reports in the newer system, numbers had actually declined. 2015’s National Incident-Based Reporting System information is not yet available from the FBI.

Nationwide

Violent crime is down in most cities nationwide, and experts told The Associated Press that the increase was driven by a spike in violent crimes in at least several large cities, making small blips seem much larger without perspective.

“There are problems with violence in certain American cities and we need to work to address that, but there’s no evidence of a national crime wave,” said Inimai Chettiar of the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute at New York University School of Law.

The statistics show an estimated 15,696 murders and non-negligent manslaughters in the country in 2015, a 10.8 percent increase from the year before. Those totals do not include killings that agencies have deemed justifiable.

Violent crime overall rose by 3.9 percent, though the total was still lower than levels from five and 10 years ago, in 2011 and 2006, the FBI said.

Speaking in Little Rock, Ark., Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that despite the increase, 2015 was still the third-lowest year for violent crime in the past 20 years.

A study by the Brennan Center for Justice released a week ago looked at violent crime in 30 cities. According to its research, the crime rate for 2016 appears to be holding to last year’s levels, but a handful of cities appear to account for a disproportionate amount of violent crime.

The number of murders reported by law enforcement agencies in four cities alone — Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. — is showing a 20 percent increase, the study said.

Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which gathers material from more than 60 large cities in the United States and Canada, told the Associated Press that the latest FBI numbers mirror what his group has been seeing.

“The increase is not off the charts by any stretch of the imagination,” Stephens said. While it would be wrong to say the U.S. is experiencing a crime wave, it also would be wrong to say there isn’t a problem, he said.

“I think this should cause people to be a little concerned — not panicky or anything — but a little concerned about what’s going on,” Stephens said.

Information from the Associated Press contributed to this report.