Although crime is often a major issue in public debate at the local and national level, American perception of crime rates often does not match what the statistics tell us. While violent crime has generally been declining for the past several decades, public opinion polling since the early 1990s shows that most Americans have felt that crime went up in the past year, when more often than not the opposite occurred.

Given this persistent gap between perception and reality as well as false or misleading public statements about crime, it’s particularly important to look at the long-term trends. Law Street’s interactive crime statistics dashboard provides detailed information about crime statistics in America’s largest cities going back to 1985. With it, you can visualize crime trends for any city with available data from the FBI and a population greater than 200,000 people.

The tool clearly illustrates the general downward trend in violent crime since the early 1990s. Here’s a look at the violent crime rate per 100,000 people for the United States as a whole and for all cities with a population over 250,000. As you can see in the chart below, violent crime rates tend to be noticeably higher in large cities relative to the nation as a whole and the decrease that has occurred over the past several decades was primarily concentrated in those cities as well.

When you look at several individual cities, that downward trend is pretty easy to identify. Three major cities with some of the largest percentage decrease in crime rates are New York City, Los Angeles, and Dallas, as you can see in the chart below. The 2015 violent crime rates in these three cities dropped by more than half relative to the rates at their respective peaks in the 1990s.

While looking at trends over several decades helps explain how crime rates today compare to the particularly high rates several decades ago, more recent trends are also important. While many cities continue to see their crime rates fall, others have seen modest but significant increases in recent years. This is particularly true when you look at changes in murder rates. The number of murders in large cities saw a notable increase in 2015, which for many cities may be an emerging trend. Here’s a look at a few cities that have seen their murder rates go up for multiple consecutive years.

Although the national murder rate and the rates in the cities detailed above went up in 2015–the most recent year with available data–it’s important to note that the increase did not happen everywhere. In fact, there were several large cities that saw modest decreases in their murder rates. However, the recent changes remain notable even if rates remain near multi-decade lows.

To take a closer look at these cities and to identify trends on your own, check out the new interactive dashboard or read more of Law Street’s Crime in America coverage.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What Do Crime Trends Look Like in America’s Largest Cities? appeared first on Law Street.

When it comes to crime statistics, violent crime tends to get most of the attention. While it’s often easy to overlook property crime because no force is involved, the FBI estimates that $14.3 billion was lost last year because of property crimes. Offenses that the FBI considers property crimes are burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The most expensive property crime is motor vehicle theft, which cost about $7,000 per crime on average in 2015.

According to FBI estimates, there were 707,758 motor vehicle thefts in 2015, causing more than $4.9 billion in losses. While property crime in general decreased last year, the number of motor vehicle thefts went up by 3.1 percent. Despite that increase, the number of vehicle thefts last year was lower than the number in 2011 and represents a decrease of more than 40 percent since 2006.

Because motor vehicle theft is a property crime, these numbers only include offenses where there is no force or threat of force involved. Additionally, because of the FBI’s hierarchy rule, if multiple crimes are committed in the same instance, only the most significant crime (typically if a violent crime is involved), is counted in the reported crime statistics.

The map below illustrates the rate of motor vehicle theft in states across the country.

With a rate of 475 motor vehicle thefts per 100,000 people, California has the highest rate in the nation. Vermont had the lowest rate of motor vehicle thefts, with just 28 per 100,000 people. Following Vermont are nearby Maine and New Hampshire, with 61 and 67 per 100,000 people respectively.

When you look at individual cities, four of the top 20 cities with the highest rates of motor vehicle theft are in California, as shown in the table below–starting with Oakland, California, which had a rate of 1,523 vehicle thefts per 100,000 people in 2015, the highest rate among all cities with more than 100,000 residents. In total, Oakland had 6,389 motor vehicle thefts last year.

The table below shows which cities have the highest rates of motor vehicle theft among cities with a population larger than 100,000 people.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What Do Motor Vehicle Theft Rates Look Like Across the U.S.? appeared first on Law Street.

On Thursday night, Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination for president in Cleveland. In his acceptance speech Trump made one thing abundantly clear: he promises to be the law and order candidate. But with that promise came the need for justification: why do we need a law and order president? Trump sought to answer that question and more by painting a particularly bleak picture of America.

Let’s take a closer look at some of Trump’s claims and put them in some much-needed context. The quotes below are taken from his prepared remarks obtained by Politico Thursday afternoon. The transcript is nearly identical to the actual speech but may have some slight differences.

Where are our violent crime numbers?

Donald Trump started his speech with some stark claims about crime in the United States:

Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America’s fifty largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years.

The 17 percent claim appears to come from a Washington Post analysis that was published earlier this year. The Post looked at preliminary crime data from 50 of the largest American cities and found that murders increased by about 17 percent in 2015. So yes, it does appear that there is an increase in homicides and there may even be an uptick in violent crime–we’ll know for sure when the FBI releases its formal statistics this fall. But it’s also important to keep this development in context.

Even with a few years of a crime spike, America is much safer than it was a two decades ago. In fact, the violent crime rate has dropped precipitously over the last 25 years. As the chart below shows, the violent crime rate has dropped by about 43 percent between 1995 and 2014. While we don’t have more recent data, it is particularly unlikely that we have reversed many of those gains within the last year and a half. We may be experiencing a spike in violent crime right now, but we currently have no indication that it will lead to a multiyear trend of increasing crime rates.

The chart below shows how violent crime has dropped over the past several decades. Note that the Y-Axis does not start at zero, rather it starts at 300 to better illustrate the relationship between each point.

Source: FBI Uniform Crime Report

Trump specifically spoke about murder rates, which have also fallen in a similar fashion. In 1995 there were 8.2 murders per 100,000 people. In 2014 the rate was 4.5. The uptick identified by the Washington Post is certainly troubling, but that too must be taken in context. Trump accurately characterized the 17 percent spike as the largest change in the past 25 years. But as the Post points out, last year’s homicide rate remains below where it was in 2008 and not every city saw an increase. Of the largest 50 cities, 36 saw an increase in murders while 14 experienced a decrease or no change.

What about Chicago?

Trump went on to note that the number of shootings in Chicago is particularly high this year:

In the President’s hometown of Chicago, more than 2,000 have been the victims of shootings this year alone. And more than 3,600 have been killed in the Chicago area since he took office.

This statistic also appears to be true. According to the Chicago Tribune’s count, there have been 2,224 shooting victims between the beginning of the year and July 22. Last year there was 2,988 shootings in total, meaning that this year will likely surpass that final count.

There does appear to be a real problem with gun violence and homicides in many American cities. We do not have enough data to say whether this is a durable trend or just an uptick, but even accounting for an increase, violence remains near historic lows. We also don’t know what is responsible for the recent developments, as many competing theories have been thrown around. It is a complex and multifaceted problem that many local police departments will need to address.

Police in America

Trump also argued that law enforcement deaths are increasing:

The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50 percent compared to this point last year.

According to the Officer Down Memorial page, which tracks police deaths as they happen, there have been 68 police officers killed in the line of duty so far this year, a 1 percent decrease. The National Law Enforcement Memorials Fund also keeps an independent count of officer deaths. According to the NLEMF’s data, there were 63 officer deaths at this point last year and there are 67 this year–a 6 percent increase. Both of those total counts include accidental deaths, but they also note that firearm-related deaths are up in 2016. A large part of that increase came in two recent high-profile attacks on police in Dallas, Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

After the Dallas attack, we noted that the resulting five officers deaths amounted to about 10 percent of the previous year’s total. According to preliminary numbers from the FBI, which specifically tracks felonious deaths, there were 42 officers killed in 2015. While the next round of FBI statistics on officer deaths and assaults in the line of duty will be particularly useful to inform these debates, the general trend has been going downward. For more, you can read our article titled, “What We Know About Officer Deaths in the Line of Duty”

Donald Trump went on to make several additional claims in his speech that have since been rigorously fact-checked. While Trump’s crime-related claims are directionally accurate, it is important to look at the surrounding context. Much of Trump’s speech seemed to hinge on whether or not the rule of law is breaking down in the United States. He argues that it has and that is why he is campaigning as the law and order candidate. However, despite a recent spike in murders and possibly violent crime, those rates remain near modern lows. Similarly, the number of police officers killed and assaulted has been declining over the past several years. While some of that progress may have been reversed temporarily, it’s important to ask whether that represents a durable trend or if it is simply a temporary uptick.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Is the World as Scary as Donald Trump Says it is? appeared first on Law Street.

As police violence has garnered much of the public’s attention, some believe that increased scrutiny of law enforcement has led to a “war on police.” The best way to understand the extent of the violence police face and how it has changed over time is to look at the FBI’s statistics on officer assaults in the line of duty.

In the map below, darker red states have a higher rate of assaults per 100 employed officers. The second chart details the number of employed officers based on the population that they cover. In total, there were 48,315 assaults in the line of duty in 2014. For the United States as a whole, there were nine assaults per 100 law enforcement officers that year.

In the second map, darker blue states mean there is a higher number of officers per 100,000 people. The FBI’s data includes statistics from 11,150 law enforcement agencies that employ more than 536,000 officers. The agencies included in the report cover more than 75 percent of the U.S. population. All data is from the 2014 calendar year.

Read More: What We Know About Officer Deaths in the Line of Duty

*Use landscape mode if viewing on mobile*

The Rockford, Illinois and Maui, Hawaii police departments are the only agencies in their states with available data. You can view both police departments’ statistics here.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Police in America 2016: State-by-State Breakdown of Officer Assaults in the Line of Duty appeared first on Law Street.

The FBI recently released a snapshot of law enforcement officer deaths in 2015, indicating that such deaths decreased last year. But that is only a small subset of the available information on officer deaths. Now that policing has reached the center of the public’s attention, statistics about what happens to officers while they’re on duty are sure to be an important part of the debate.

Interactive Map: Officer Assaults and Employment by State

The FBI publishes an annual report on Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted in the Line of Duty (LEOKA), which can provide some interesting insights into the matter and inform debates about police deaths. The annual LEOKA publication is one of the most detailed data sets kept by the FBI. For obvious reasons, it’s important for the FBI and all law enforcement agencies to keep track of and understand the situations in which police officers are killed and assaulted.

Here’s what the FBI data tells us:

More Officers Die from Accidents than Felonies

Source: FBI LEOKA 2014     |     Includes Preliminary 2015 Data

The chart above details the number of officer deaths from both accidents and felonies between 2005 and 2015. The average number of felonious deaths during that 11 year period is about 50, while the average number of accidental deaths is just below 60. Last year saw particularly low numbers for both felonious and accidental deaths, with 41 and 45 respectively.

The data can also tell us a lot about the causes of these deaths. Nearly 60 percent of accidental deaths that occurred between 2005 and 2014 were the result of automobile accidents. If you broaden the category to include motorcycle and aircraft accidents they account for more than 70 percent in total.

The chart below details the trends over time:

Source: FBI, LEOKA and *Preliminary 2015 Data

There has been a slight downward trend in both felonious and accidental police officer deaths. The preliminary numbers for 2015 are also encouraging, as the number of accidental deaths tied its 10-year low with 45, and the number of felonious deaths matched the second lowest point in the same period at 41. Law enforcement deaths in the line of duty is certainly an important thing to track, but when it comes to assessing the threat that officers face every day, looking at assault statistics can be particularly informative.

 What We Know About the Offenders

Source: FBI, LEOKA – Table 47

The FBI keeps detailed information on both victims and offenders, allowing felonious offenders to be broken down by race, sex, and several other categories. Between 2005 and 2014, there was a total of 563 offenders involved in felonious officer deaths. When you break those numbers down by race, 309, or 55 percent of the known offenders are white and 224, or 40 percent are black. Asian/Pacific islanders, Native Americans, and offenders whose race was not reported account for less than 2 percent each.

Offenders are also overwhelmingly male–nearly 97 percent of known offenders are men. The vast majority–83 percent–have also had prior criminal arrests and just over one-quarter of all offenders were under some form of judicial supervision.

Assaults and Injuries have Been Decreasing

Source: FBI, LEOKA – Table 76

Assaults on police officers have generally trended downward over the past 10 years. After peaking at 61,257 in 2007, the total number of assaults has decreased to 48,315 in 2014, a decrease of more than 20 percent. The chart above also details the number of officers who sustained injuries from an assault. All injury numbers are estimates–based on percentages provided by the FBI–with the exception of 2014, which is the exact number recorded by the FBI.

The number of assaults that caused injuries also followed a downward trend, with approximately 16,866 in 2007 and 13,654 in 2014. Although the number of injuries has not dropped as quickly as the total number of assaults, this is certainly an encouraging sign for police officers.

Moving Forward

The 2015 assault and injury statistics, which will be released later this year, will be particularly interesting in light of recent discussion of the so-called “Ferguson effect,” in which some argue that the perceived threat to law enforcement officers has caused proactive policing to decline and crime rates to go up. These numbers will also help inform the debate on the alleged “war on police,” a related argument in which some claim that officers are being attacked more as protests and movements like Black Lives Matter have called more attention to issues surrounding police violence.

Based on the preliminary numbers for felonious deaths, that does not appear to be the case. But we do not yet know whether increased scrutiny is correlated with an increase in assaults. As the chart above indicates, the number of assaults has gone down steadily over the past several years, but in time, we’ll know if 2015 is an exception.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Police in America 2016: What We Know About Officer Deaths in the Line of Duty appeared first on Law Street.

Law Street Media’s Police in America coverage takes a look at statistics on law enforcement officers in the U.S. As the conversations around police policies, use of force, and police deaths feature prominently in public discourse, Law Street strives to provide the most up-to-date facts, numbers, and coverage of Police in America.

Officer Deaths by the Numbers

What We Know About Officer Deaths in the Line of Duty

State-by-State Breakdown of Officer Assaults in the Line of Duty

Latest News:

Preliminary Data Shows Drop in Police Officer Deaths

When Does Racial Bias Affect Police Officers’ Use of Force?

To read more about crime rates in U.S. cities, states, and metropolitan areas, check out Law Street’s Crime in America coverage.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Police in America 2016 appeared first on Law Street.

Preliminary statistics released by the FBI on Monday show that 41 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in 2015, a 20 percent decrease from the previous year. Although the statistics are preliminary and are subject to revision, these numbers indicate that police officer deaths are near historic lows. This release comes during national police week, which began with a candlelit vigil on May 13.

The preliminary statistics will likely add to the debate about a so-called “war on cops” that some argue is the result of recent police protests. While law enforcement work often involves danger, there is no evidence to suggest that police officer deaths are on the rise. The number of police officer deaths decreased significantly last year and is at the second-lowest level in the past decade.

Take a look at the graphics below to understand these statistics and how they fit into historical trends.

Officer Deaths Over Time

Source: FBI, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2014 and *Preliminary 2015 Release

Both felonious and accidental deaths were relatively low in 2015 compared to previous years. Felonious deaths experienced a 20 percent decrease from the previous year. With 41 felonious deaths, last year matched 2008 with the second lowest number in over a decade. The lowest number in recent history came in 2013 with 27 deaths from felonious incidents in the line of duty.

Accidental deaths did not change between 2014 and 2015, but at 45, that number is at its lowest level for over a decade. A death is considered accidental by the FBI when it was a result of something that was not willful or intentional.

Regional Breakdown

Source: FBI

The chart above details the distribution of felonious police officer deaths from the FBI’s preliminary data. The South saw the most with 46 percent of the total deaths, followed by the West with 22 percent, the Midwest with 12 percent, and Northeast and Puerto Rico with just under 10 percent each.

While the statistics released on Monday do not provide details about the number of law enforcement officers and the population covered by each region, it is important to note that historical data indicates that the South has both more people and officers compared to other regions. Based on data from the 2014 report, the last year with complete data available, the South had about 40 percent of all employed police officers and the South has historically had higher numbers of police officer deaths than other regions.

Weapons Involved

Source: FBI

The chart above details the weapons involved in the 41 felonious officer deaths based on the preliminary data for 2015. All but three deaths were due to the use of firearms, with handguns accounting for nearly three-quarters of firearm deaths. The FBI also notes that 30 of the 41 officers were wearing body armor when they were killed.

The vast majority of the 45 accidental deaths involved automobiles; 29 were due to automotive accidents, seven were struck by vehicles, and four were fatally injured in motorcycle accidents.

A Look at 2016

While the FBI does not have any information available for 2016, and likely won’t until it releases preliminary data this time next year, there are independent counts of law enforcement fatalities with more updated information. The Officer Down Memorial Page, which has tracked this data for a long period of time, has found 17 fatal shootings and one intentional death using a vehicle as a weapon so far this year. As the Guardian points out, if this rate continues for the rest of the year there would be 48 officer deaths–an increase from 2015 and the same number as 2014, based on the website’s count.

The final data, which will have expanded details and information on assaults that resulted in injury in 2015, will be released by the FBI in the fall with its annual Law Enforcement Officers Killed in Assaulted report.

For more Law Street Media Crime Coverage, Check Out Crime in America 2016

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Police in America 2016: Preliminary Data Shows Drop in Police Deaths appeared first on Law Street.