FBI Report: Violent, Property Crime Decreases In 2009

  • May 25, 2010

Preliminary 2009 statistics indicate that violent crime in the nation decreased 5.5 percent and property crime declined 4.9 percent when compared with data from 2008, according to the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report, which was released recently. Data in the report came from 13,237 law enforcement agencies that submitted six to 12 months of data in both 2008 and 2009.

Violent Crime

  • All four violent crime offenses -- murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault -- declined nationwide in 2009 when compared with 2008 data. Robbery dropped 8.1 percent, murder decreased 7.2 percent, aggravated assault declined 4.2 percent, and forcible rape decreased 3.1 percent.
  • Violent crime fell in all city groupings. The largest decrease, 7.5 percent, was in cities with populations ranging from 500,000 to 999,999 inhabitants. Violent crime declined 4.0 percent in the nation’s metropolitan counties and 3.0 percent in nonmetropolitan counties.
  • Cities with 25,000 to 49,999 inhabitants were the only city population group to report an increase in the number of murders, 5.3 percent. The number of murders in the nation’s nonmetropolitan counties also rose, 1.8 percent.
  • Forcible rape trends dropped in all city population groups. The largest decrease was 7.3 percent in cities of less than 10,000 residents. Metropolitan counties reported a 3.7 percent decline in the number of rapes, but the number of rapes reported in nonmetropolitan counties rose slightly, 0.3 percent.
  • All population groups reported decreases in the volume of robbery in 2009. Of the city groups, cities with populations of 100,000 to 249,999 had the largest decrease at 10.3 percent. Metropolitan counties reported a 6.7 percent drop in robberies; nonmetropolitan counties reported a 0.7 percent decline.
  • The number of aggravated assaults declined in all population groups, with cities of 500,000 to 999,999 inhabitants reporting a 6.3 percent decrease. Aggravated assaults declined 3.7 percent in nonmetropolitan counties and 3.0 percent in metropolitan counties.
  • All four regions in the nation showed decreases in violent crime in 2009 when compared with data from 2008. Violent crime decreased 6.6 percent in the South, 5.6 percent in the West, 4.6 percent in the Midwest, and 3.5 percent in the Northeast.

Property Crime

  • All property crime offenses -- burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft -- decreased in 2009 when compared with 2008 data. Motor vehicle theft showed the largest drop in volume at 17.2 percent, larceny-thefts declined 4.2 percent, and burglaries decreased 1.7 percent.
  • The nation’s largest cities, one million or more inhabitants, reported the greatest decrease, 7.9 percent, in property crime overall. Of the city groupings, this population group also reported the biggest decreases in the offenses that comprise property crime: a 21.1 percent drop in motor vehicle theft, a 5.7 percent decline in burglary, and a 5.5 percent decrease in larceny-theft. In the nation’s nonmetropolitan counties, larceny-thefts fell 9.5 percent; in metropolitan counties, larceny-thefts declined 5.9 percent.
  • The only population group to indicate a rise in any type of property crime was in nonmetropolitan counties, where burglary rose 0.5 percent.
  • In comparing 2008 data and 2009 data by region, law enforcement agencies in the West reported the biggest decline in property crime, with a decrease of 6.8 percent. Property crime declined 5.6 percent in the Midwest, 5.3 percent in the Northeast, and 3.2 percent in the South.

Arson

  • Arson offenses, which are tracked separately from other property crimes, declined 10.4 percent nationwide. All population groups reported decreases in the volume of arson offenses. In addition, arson fell in all four of the nation’s regions: 11.6 percent in the West, 10.6 percent in the South, 9.2 percent in the Midwest, and 8.6 percent in the Northeast.

The complete 2009 Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report is available at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/prelimsem2009/index.html.

Featured

  • Integration Imagination: The Future of Connected Operations

    Security teams that collaborate cross-functionally and apply imagination and creativity to envision and design their ideal integrated ecosystem will have the biggest upside to corporate security and operational benefits. Read Now

  • Smarter Access Starts with Flexibility

    Today’s workplaces are undergoing a rapid evolution, driven by hybrid work models, emerging smart technologies, and flexible work schedules. To keep pace with growing workplace demands, buildings are becoming more dynamic – capable of adapting to how people move, work, and interact in real-time. Read Now

  • Trends Keeping an Eye on Business Decisions

    Today, AI continues to transform the way data is used to make important business decisions. AI and the cloud together are redefining how video surveillance systems are being used to simulate human intelligence by combining data analysis, prediction, and process automation with minimal human intervention. Many organizations are upgrading their surveillance systems to reap the benefits of technologies like AI and cloud applications. Read Now

  • The Future is Happening Outside the Cloud

    For years, the cloud has captivated the physical security industry. And for good reason. Remote access, elastic scalability and simplified maintenance reshaped how we think about deploying and managing systems. But as the number of cameras grows and resolutions push from HD to 4K and beyond, the cloud’s limits are becoming unavoidable. Bandwidth bottlenecks. Latency lags. Rising storage costs. These are not abstract concerns. Read Now

  • Right-Wing Activist Charlie Kirk Dies After Utah Valley University Shooting

    Charlie Kirk, a popular conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, died Wednesday after being shot during an on-campus event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah Read Now

Most   Popular

New Products

  • 4K Video Decoder

    3xLOGIC’s VH-DECODER-4K is perfect for use in organizations of all sizes in diverse vertical sectors such as retail, leisure and hospitality, education and commercial premises.

  • Luma x20

    Luma x20

    Snap One has announced its popular Luma x20 family of surveillance products now offers even greater security and privacy for home and business owners across the globe by giving them full control over integrators’ system access to view live and recorded video. According to Snap One Product Manager Derek Webb, the new “customer handoff” feature provides enhanced user control after initial installation, allowing the owners to have total privacy while also making it easy to reinstate integrator access when maintenance or assistance is required. This new feature is now available to all Luma x20 users globally. “The Luma x20 family of surveillance solutions provides excellent image and audio capture, and with the new customer handoff feature, it now offers absolute privacy for camera feeds and recordings,” Webb said. “With notifications and integrator access controlled through the powerful OvrC remote system management platform, it’s easy for integrators to give their clients full control of their footage and then to get temporary access from the client for any troubleshooting needs.”

  • QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    The latest Qualcomm® Vision Intelligence Platform offers next-generation smart camera IoT solutions to improve safety and security across enterprises, cities and spaces. The Vision Intelligence Platform was expanded in March 2022 with the introduction of the QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC), which delivers superior artificial intelligence (AI) inferencing at the edge.