Murders, rapes and assaults dropped nationally over the past year, but car thefts and larceny spiked in the FBI’s national crime report released Monday.
The FBI’s 2022 Uniform Crime Report notes more than 11 million crimes, with data collected from police departments and law enforcement agencies that serve more than 311 million Americans, or 93.5% of the U.S. population.
The 1.7% overall decline in violent crime was driven mainly by fewer homicides and non-negligent manslaughter (down 6.1%).
Most major cities are reporting less bloodshed after the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. The national homicide rate spiked 29% in 2020 before a slight decline in 2021.
The downward trend accelerated in 2022. The FBI said the violent crime rate was 380.7 per 100,000 people — a smidgen better than 380.8 per 100,000 people in 2019.
AH Datalytics, a New Orleans-based research firm, shows substantial year-over-year decreases in homicides through 2023 in big cities, including New York (down 10%), Los Angeles (down 24%), Chicago (down 11%), Houston (down 19%) and Philadelphia (down 24%).
Cleveland, Dallas, Memphis, Tennessee, Miami and the District of Columbia are among the outliers, where violence has worsened as they return to pre-COVID normalcy.
The more than 200 homicides recorded in the District in 2023 marks the third consecutive year that the nation’s capital has hit that grim milestone. The District last recorded more than 200 homicides in three consecutive years nearly two decades ago.
“This is a bad year. I can’t sugarcoat that,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said after the city recorded its 200th homicide last month. “I certainly wouldn’t try to tell that to anybody who’s listening to gunfire outside of their homes or who has lost a loved one.”
The FBI data also shows a significant decline in rapes (5.4%) and a 1.1% decline in aggravated assaults.
The only violent crime that increased in 2022 was robbery (up 1.3%). Part of that may be driven by an 8.1% increase in carjackings, which the FBI treats as a subset of robbery offenses.
Roughly half of all carjackings took place between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. A large majority involved the use of a weapon to coerce people out of their vehicles.
Property crimes increased 7.1% nationwide, according to the FBI report. Larceny and theft rose by 7.8% in 2022.
California aims to crack down on “flash mob” robberies by investing millions of dollars into local police departments.
Motor vehicle thefts jolted up 10.9% in the past year. Juveniles were major contributors to the thefts of nearly 1 million vehicles nationwide in 2022.
Nearly 18% of males arrested on vehicle theft charges were underage, and roughly 14% of the females arrested were juveniles, according to the FBI.
Those trends don’t appear to be slowing this year. Chicago, Minneapolis and Oakland, California, are among the cities enduring the brunt of the vehicle thefts.
Many of the thefts started with the Kia Boyz TikTok challenge, which taught people how to hot-wire older model Hyundais and Kias with just a screwdriver and a USB cord.
“That Tiktok challenge of how to steal the Kias and Hyundais, that was the biggest thing,” Matt Nalett, who operates the volunteer-run Chicago Stolen Car Directory on Facebook, told WTTW-TV in August. “And kids are like, ‘We got nothing to do, let’s steal cars.’ When they were out that two years of COVID, they were bored and had nothing to do and stealing cars left and right.”
Chicago has recorded nearly 23,000 vehicles stolen in 2023, a massive jump from the 13,300 documented at this point last year.
Almost 12,000 vehicles have been stolen this year in Oakland. Last week, nine teens were arrested in the Bay Area city on charges of stealing a Hyundai SUV and leading the California Highway Patrol on a high-speed chase.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara sounded the alarm on youth-involved vehicle thefts this year after an 11-year-old was arrested with a modified gun in a stolen car.
On Monday, the city had documented 6,439 auto thefts, surpassing 6,283 in 2022.
Gunfire last year killed 11.8% more juveniles but 6.6% fewer adults.
The number of assaults on police officers increased 1.8%.
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