Palm Beach County’s crime rate increased slightly in 2016, as fewer people were hurt but more of their stuff was stolen, state officials said this week.
The county bucked a trend across the state, with Florida’s crime rate reaching its lowest level in 46 years in 2016. But the overall increase in crimes was due to a jump in property crimes such as car thefts, as well as a sharper increase in robberies, which are considered violent crimes.
The county saw a 2.2 percent increase in the number of crimes reported to the state over 2015’s numbers, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported in its Annual Uniform Crime Report, released Wednesday. The number of homicides and sexual assaults decreased, but Palm Beach County saw more robberies, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts.
Every two days in Palm Beach County in 2016, compared to 2015, another car was stolen and another three larcenies were committed. Those two categories constituted nearly the entirety of the county’s increase in crime.
But crimes that hurt people were generally down. County law-enforcement agencies reported 76 murders, down 21; and 511 rapes, down 12; and 4,195 aggravated assaults. Two different sets of FDLE numbers had somewhat different tallies for 2015 comparisons, particularly for aggravated assaults, which either rose or fell by about 100.
The only other violent crime category to increase was robbery, up 103 to 1,753, or a 6.2 percent increase. The Palm Beach Post’s homicide tracker shows 87 homicides in 2016, down 22 from 2015’s toll. Not all homicides are murders, such as self-defense shootings and legitimate use-of-force actions by police officers.
The countywide trends were exaggerated in Boynton Beach, where total reported crimes surged about 10 percent. Yet murders dropped from 8 to 1, and rape from 4 to 3. Nearly the entirety of the increase came from an 13 percent increase in larcenies, and a jump in car thefts to 254 from 198.
One of the best success stories may have been in Greenacres, where the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office took over patrols in February 2016. Crimes overall dropped about 35 percent, with decreases in every category except rape, which moved from 17 to 18.
In West Palm Beach, car thefts dropped while burglary and larceny jumped. The city’s murder toll plummeted after the deadly summer of 2015, from 22 murders that year to 10 the next as West Palm Beach police changed their approach toward crime prevention.
But West Palm Beach’s tally of rapes jumped to 71 from 50, the statistics show. Police Sgt. David Lefont said the city has no serial rapists but the numbers can be skewed by child molestations, which are included in rape statistics.
The crime statistics varied greatly by communities.
— Wellington saw a big drop in larcenies but a large increase in burglaries and car thefts.
— Palm Beach Gardens went from 10 rapes to 13, and from 16 robberies to 27, but the overall crime rate decreased as larcenies fell.
— Boca Raton had almost 13 percent more crimes, driven by robbery and other types of theft.
— In Jupiter, larcenies jumped 8 percent. Robberies leaped from 17 to 40 and aggravated assaults from 70 to 92, helping drive an overall 8.5-percent increase in crime.
Across the state, Florida saw a 4.4 percent drop in the crime rate. The governor’s office attributed the decline in part to investing $4.9 billion in public-safety programs, including pay increases for police officers and increased funding for prevention programs focusing on at-risk youth and reducing the number of repeat offenders.
In Martin County, the number increased by 0.8 percent, the state’s data shows. County law enforcement officials reported six homicides in 2016 after reporting none in 2015.
The county had two of the area’s most high-profile murder cases in the April 2016 slaying of hospice nurse Tricia Todd, and the August 2016 murders of couple John Stevens III and Michelle Mishcon. Todd’s ex-husband, Steven Williams, was sentenced in September to 35 years in prison for second-degree murder.
Stevens confessed to the slaying nearly a month after Todd was reported missing. Austin Harrouff, 20, was arrested the night of Stevens and Mishcon’s slaying with authorities allegeding he fatally stabbed the couple in their garage and bit one of his victims on the face. Harrouff remains in custody awaiting trial.
Crimes in St. Lucie County decreased by 3.7 percent, according to the state’s statistics.
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