Twice a year, the FBI releases a report called the Uniform Crime Report. The FBI has just made available the 2007 Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, one of those two reports, and I just spent a while crunching a few numbers in Excel and comparing how San Diego has fared compared to the rest of the country and other big cities.
The report covers crime statistics from the first six months of 2007 and compares them to the first six months of 2006. It’s important to remember that the report covers the number of crimes that are reported to police departments, which has been criticized as an inefficient way of measuring the number of overall crimes being committed.
Nationwide, the big figures were that the overall number of violent crimes reported decreased by 1.8 percent. In San Diego, the number of violent crimes reported in the first six months of 2007 decreased more than the national average — it was down 2.3 percent from the year before.
But San Diego didn’t do as well as other large cities. On average, American cities of more than 1 million people saw the number of violent crimes reported drop 4.1 percent, almost twice the drop seen in San Diego.
The number of property crimes reported nationwide in the first six months of 2007 decreased 2.6 percent from the year before. In San Diego, the number of property crimes reported dropped less sharply, by 1 percent, better than the 0.09 percent drop seen on average in big cities.
San Diego saw an increase in robberies reported in the first six months of 2007. The number of robberies reported rose 1.7 percent from 2006. By comparison, the average number of robberies reported in big cities dropped 4.3 percent. Nationwide, the number of robberies reported dropped 1.2 percent.
The only other reported crime that increased in San Diego in the first six months of 2007 was burglary, which increased 7.2 percent last year. That was more than twice the increase seen on average in big cities. Nationwide, the number of burglaries reported dropped 1.3 percent.
The full report can be read here.