By Adam Pagnucco.
Parts One and Two examined times of day for violent crime and property crime and found some differences. Violent crime is focused in the hours of 3 PM through 9 PM and has been declining after midnight. Property crime is focused in the hours of noon through 6 PM but has been spiking after midnight. Those trends are countywide. The county’s primary crime interest right now is in its urban areas and specifically Downtown Silver Spring. Is crime different there?
To answer that question, I repeated our time of day analysis in zip code 20910, which includes Silver Spring’s urban core. Here are comparative stats between that zip code and the entire county.
Average Violent Crime Rate per Thousand Residents, 2017-22
Countywide: 4.7
20910: 8.0 (second highest behind 20877)
Change in Violent Crime, 2017-22
Countywide: +8%
20910: +43%
Average Property Crime Rate per Thousand Residents, 2017-22
Countywide: 21.8
20910: 45.3 (highest in the county)
Change in Property Crime, 2017-22
Countywide: 0%
20910: +22%
Looking at the above stats, the county’s leaders are right to be concerned about Downtown Silver Spring.
The pie charts below show the times of day for violent crime and property crime in zip code 20910.
For both violent and property crime, the afternoon and early night (before midnight) accounted for roughly two-thirds of all crime. Late night (after midnight) accounted for 20% of violent crime and 14% of property crime.
The charts below show recent trends in violent crime and property crime by time of day in zip code 20910.
Here’s a Captain Obvious statement: these charts show just how much rising crime Downtown Silver Spring has. For violent crime, all times of day have seen increases, but the biggest growth has been in the morning (up 90%) and the afternoon (up 48%). For property crime, each time of day except for the afternoon has seen a significant increase, but late night has seen by far the largest growth (up 88%).
The spike in property crime after midnight is even more pronounced than it is countywide (where it rose by 33% since 2017). That’s concerning and a late night focus may help remediate that specific phenomenon. But overall, a late night strategy like the county’s proposal omits the vast majority of crime in Downtown Silver Spring and does little if anything to deal with increases in the morning and afternoon. That doesn’t make the county’s proposal inherently bad but it does seem incomplete.
We will have more in Part Four.