By Adam Pagnucco.
Let’s start by acknowledging that crime data is iffy at best. For what it’s worth, crime data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suggests that MoCo’s rates of violent and property crime were lower than many other jurisdictions in the region in 2019 and 2020. It’s time now to dig into the county’s online crime database to look inside MoCo. What’s going on with crime?
The table below shows major categories of crime and other activities reported in police incident reports in 2017 through 2022. Note that this is raw data downloaded on February 5, 2023 and does not align with the statistics cited from the FBI earlier in this series. One reason is that the Rockville and Gaithersburg police departments and the county’s fire marshal participate in the county’s system but do not report crime to the FBI.
Violent crime (crime against person) dipped in 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, but it subsequently rose and is at its highest level in the data series. Property crime fell from 2017 to 2018 but has risen each year since. The big story here is an absolute collapse in reported crime against society, which we will explore below. The “other” category includes animal bites, failure to appear in court, fire code and home improvement violations, fire other than arson, juvenile offenses, littering, lost property, mental illness, mental transport, missing person, non-support, overdose, police information, recovered property, sudden death, suicide, fraud (failure to pay), traffic offenses and transporting dangerous materials. Not a crime refers to juvenile runaways.
Let’s take a look at some of the most prominent violent crimes.
After an abnormally high 2021, murder appears to be at a more normal level in 2022. While murder is horrific, MoCo has very little of it. (Baltimore City had 333 homicides in 2022.) The upward trend in violent crime is driven by increases in simple assault and aggravated assault, the two largest crime types in the category. Simple assaults are misdemeanors that involve touching another person without their consent. Aggravated assaults are felonies that involve attacking or threatening to attack with intent to cause serious harm.
Now let’s look at a few measures of property crime.
These crimes have mixed trends. Identity theft, theft of motor vehicle parts, motor vehicle theft and swindling are up substantially. Thefts from motor vehicles and buildings are down. In terms of definitions, robbery involves taking property from a person using force or coercion, while burglary involves breaking and entering a property with intent to commit crime.
Finally, let’s look at large categories of crimes against society.
Aside from weapons violations, these types of crimes have nose-dived. In fact, they are down so much that when violent crime, property crime and crimes against society are added together, total reported crime is down by 20% since 2017. It’s hard to believe that actual behaviors like drug use, drunk driving, trespassing, disorderly conduct and liquor law violations have declined this much. Are county police simply not enforcing these laws as they did years ago?
Next, we will explore the geography of violent crime in the county.