A look at the rates of murder, robbery, aggravated assault, and car theft—the crimes most reliably reported to police.
News Analysis
Is crime rising or falling across the United States? National crime trends have been difficult to track in recent years because of changes in the way that police departments report their statistics to the FBI.
But by examining crime data from large police departments individually, a clearer pattern emerges.
The Epoch Times’ analysis of data going back several years shows that while the major crime spike that plagued the United States’ largest cities has ebbed, crime rates are still exceeding numbers from before the 2020 summer of protests and riots.
Car theft, in particular, has remained high. Robbery, on the other hand, has declined significantly in some large cities.
The analysis has focused on the top 10 most populous cities and the four offenses of murder, robbery, aggravated assault, and car theft, which tend to be the most reliably reported to the police, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Census Bureau.
New York City, Pop. 8.2 Million
The country’s largest city suffered a surge in violence starting in mid-2020 as a wave of protests and riots hit the country following the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
Shootings doubled that year, with more than 1,850 wounded or killed. Car theft, after dwindling for decades, shot up by 66 percent, NYPD data show.
Crime continued to rise in 2021, with 488 people murdered—the most in a decade.
In 2022, murder declined by about 10 percent, but instances of other serious crimes kept increasing. Car theft was up by more than 150 percent from 2019. Major theft (of items worth more than $1,000 in value) and felony assaults reached numbers unseen since the 1990s.
Violent crime subsided a step further in 2023. Murder dropped by another 11 percent but was still more than 20 percent above the pre-2020 numbers. Meanwhile, car thefts and felony assaults went up again.
By Petr Svab
