WILMINGTON — Overall crime in Wilmington was down from 2016, reaching an all-time low. However, when broken down by the numbers, murder and other violent crimes have been on the rise.
Wilmington Police Department Chief of Police Ralph Evangelous gave a presentation of the crime rates in Wilmington Tuesday evening at a City Council meeting. Evangelous discussed the two separate trends.
Tracking crime
When keeping track of crime rates in any city, the FBI categorizes crimes into different categories. “Part one” crimes are considered the most serious of crimes and include: criminal homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
“We are in a better position overall in part one crimes in 2017 than we were in 2016,” Evangelous said of the overall rate of part one crimes.
Part one crimes in 2017
- Murder, 19
- Rape, 42
- Robbery, 195
- Assault, 517
- Burglary, 1000
- Larceny, 2914
- Auto theft, 264
- Arson, 7
According to Evangelous, 2017 overall saw a decrease in part one crimes compared to 2016 — but not all part one crimes decreased. In fact, in 2017 the murder rate increased 27 percent from 2016 with a total of 19 murders in 2017 compared to 2016’s 15.
Rape was down 7 percent in 2017 from 45 in 2016 to 42 last year.
Robberies against individuals were also down in 2017, but commercial robberies more than doubled in 2017, according to Evangelous’ presentation.
Burglaries have also seen a decrease and have reached a historic all-time low, Evangelous said.
Violent crime overall saw a rise, increasing from 730 incidents to 773 incidents in one year; assaults also saw an increase of 11 percent.
Auto thefts in Wilmington also saw a 6 percent increase from 2016, with 264 thefts occurring in 2017, compared to 250 the previous year.
According to Evangelous, the spikes in assaults can be blamed on incidents that occurred in December.
“There was a spike, but that spike, a big part of that number is in December, two incidences that occurred involving 18 victims. Those two incidences really made up a big portion of any increase in assaults,” Evangelous said.
“When you look at part one crimes, and these are raw numbers now, that is the lowest raw number crime we’ve ever have seen. We have never broken into the 4,000 category,” Evangelous added.
While the City of Wilmington has seen significant population growth, Evangelous said the crime rates have steadily decreased as the number of people has increased.
“When you look at raw numbers you would think that as (the) population grows, raw numbers would increase. Not the case. The trend line from 2002-03 has been pretty much trending down,” he said.
Related: Evangelous reviews annual crime statistics for City Council each year. In October, Evangelous sat down for a more in-depth conversation about some of the complications in tracking and addressing different trends in criminal activity.
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