Saint Paul Police Department releases preliminary 2019 year-end crime statistics
Violent crime lowest in quarter century, property crime up
The Saint Paul Police Department today (Wednesday, Jan. 8) released preliminary year-end crime statistics for 2019.
Overall, Part I crime increased by 8.4 percent, according to preliminary data compiled by the police department. The data, which will be reviewed and finalized over the next two months for submission to the FBI for the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, show that the increase was largely driven by property crimes, which include motor vehicle thefts, thefts and burglaries.
Part I offenses are defined by the FBI and are broken down into two categories: crimes against persons and crimes against property. Crimes against persons include criminal homicide, rape and aggravated assault. Crimes against property include robbery, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.
In 2019, crimes against persons fell by 13.3 percent while crimes against property rose by 11.2 percent. Violent crime, which includes homicide, rape, aggravated assault and robbery, hit a 25-year low.
According to Saint Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell, the department made the strategic decision to allocate resources to address violent crime.
“We have to make difficult decisions about how to best deploy our limited resources,” he said. “Last year we focused on the types of crime that hurt people the most, which helped us reduce aggravated assaults and rapes but may have come at a cost in terms of property crime.”
The following is a list of the number of reports for each category received in 2019 as well as the percentage change from the previous year:
- 224 rapes (19.1 percent decrease),
- 545 robberies (2.7 percent decrease),
- 943 aggravated assaults (13.4 percent decrease),
- 2,030 burglaries (6.3 percent increase),
- 6,673 thefts (13.5 percent increase),
- 2,590 vehicle thefts (12.8 percent increase), and
- 118 arsons (7.3 percent increase).
- 30 criminal homicides (100 percent increase),
Because the data are based on initial incident information that does not include a final assessment of victims or unfounded reports of crime, it is considered preliminary. It is possible that the final percentage could change slightly when it is submitted to the FBI for Uniform Crime Reporting purposes later this year.
Once submitted, that information, along with data for previous years can be found at https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr.
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