City crime down; above US rates - The Daily Advance

How bad is crime in Elizabeth City?

Answering that question is complicated, but the latest data show the city's crime rates have gone down from seven years ago, but remain above national rates.

That conclusion is based off a review of incident data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's “Uniform Crime Reporting” statistics, supplemented by data provided by the Elizabeth City Police Department. The FBI explains that it collects nationwide statistics on eight types of serious and common crimes — the violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, and the property crimes of burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson. The FBI defines robbery as forcible theft directly from a person, burglary as breaking and entering a structure to commit theft or a felony, and larceny simply as unlawfully taking property.

The data show there were 120 violent crimes in 2010, rising to 132 in 2012 and then going down to 87 in 2015. The majority of those offenses were aggravated assaults, followed by robberies and then rapes and murders. The most rapes, six, occurred in 2013, and there were four murders in 2010 but only one in 2015.

The data also show there were 772 property crimes in 2010, versus 686 in 2015. The majority of those were larcenies, followed by burglaries and motor vehicle thefts. The FBI and ECPD didn't have arson statistics for all six years, nor could the Elizabeth City Fire Department immediately provide those statistics. An ECFD spokesman said there are typically no more than a few arsons a year.

Elizabeth City's population has also shrunk since 2010. That makes it possible for crime rates to go up without an increase in the number of incidents. For instance, Elizabeth City had two murders in 2012 and 2013, according to FBI and police data, but the FBI shows the city's population shrunk by about 400 people, to 18,395. That makes 2013's murder rate slightly higher.

The FBI represents crime rates as the number of incidents per 100,000 people. In 2010, the national violent crime rate was about 405 per 100,000 and the property crime rate was 2,946 per 100,000.

By that metric, Elizabeth City's 120 violent crimes in 2010 is proportionally equivalent to 642 per 100,000, while its property crime rate in 2010 would be 4,132. That means the city's level of crime was slightly disproportionate to its population.

The city's violent crime rate in 2014 dropped to 501 per 100,000, versus the national rate of 362 per 100,000, while its property crime rate dropped to 4,388 per 100,000, versus 2,574 per 100,000 nationally.

As to 2015, the FBI has not provided an estimate of Elizabeth City's population for 2015, and the population numbers it used in prior years differ from U.S. Census Bureau data.

However, supposing the city's population in 2015 was about 18,000, the city's violent crime rate would be 483 per 100,000, and its property crime rate would be about 3,811 per 100,000. That would be an improvement from 2014, but still well above the national rates of 373 violent crimes per 100,000 and 2,487 property crimes per 100,000.

Based upon the FBI's estimate of the city's population, the city's violent crime rate in 2010 was about 577 incidents per 100,000 people. That's compared to the national violent crime rate of about 405 per 100,000. The city's property crime rate in 2010 was 3,711.

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