PHILADELPHIA (AP) — As U.S. police departments release preliminary or finalized 2024 crime numbers, many are reporting historic declines in homicides and drops in other violent crimes compared to 2023.
In many parts of the country, though, those decreases don’t match the public perception.
Experts say most cities are seeing a drop in crime levels that spiked during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But they say misleading campaign rhetoric in the runup to the November elections and changes in how people interpret news about crime have led to a perception gap.
“The presence of even one murder has a great cost,” said Kim Smith, the director of national programs at the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab.
Violence interruption and intervention programs have helped decrease gun violence and homicide numbers in Chicago and elsewhere, Smith said. But even with fewer crimes, people experiencing it in their neighborhood lowers their perception of being safe.
“The presence of those crimes is the thing that people get the most distress from, and that has the biggest impact on people being able to enjoy their neighborhood and on quality of life,” she said.
Jeff Asher, cofounder of AH Datalytics, tracks crimes across the country using law enforcement data for the group’s Real-Time Crime Index. He said the data, which lags by about 45 days rather than being reported quarterly or annually like a lot of crime statistics, allows communities and experts to evaluate and respond to trends as they are happening.
Early in 2024, Asher noticed cities were largely seeing historic declines in homicide numbers, but much more muted declines in other violent crimes.
New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Houston, Detroit, Baltimore and dozens of other cities have reported drops in homicides last year compared to 2023. Some saw small decreases, including New York, which had 14 fewer homicides than the 391 reported in 2023. But others had large decreases, including Philadelphia, which had 255 in 2024 compared to 398 in 2023.
Homicides did increase in a few cities, including Charlotte, North Carolina, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Asher said.
Other crimes were a little more unpredictable. Robberies were down in all of the 10 largest U.S. cities that have released final or preliminary end-of-year figures for 2024. And across the board, car thefts were down by double-digit percentages. But sexual assaults and aggravated or felony physical assaults were up in several of those cities.
“In some ways, ‘Is crime up?’ is a poorly defined question. Do you mean murder, do you mean the FBI definitions, are you talking about car theft, or are you talking about shoplifting or things that are difficult to measure?” Asher said. “Or maybe you’re thinking of things that aren’t criminal at all. Maybe you see something happen downtown that makes you feel unsafe and gives you that perception.”
Mike Lawlor, an associate professor of criminology at the University of New Haven and a former legislator, said experience of crime can be skewed by neighborhood apps where anyone who has a package stolen or sees something that might not be criminal posts it for public consumption. He said it also can be skewed by intense media coverage of isolated incidents.
“You just become much more likely to hear about these things on local tv news and because of social media or these apps,” Lawlor said. “When in reality, but for the pandemic, we would have been at historic lows on crime.”
The pandemic put a hold on a lot of programs that have had success decreasing gun violence because a lot of that work requires face-to-face conversations to identify the most at-risk individuals and provide services or programs to them, he said.
But Lawlor said, politics plays a role in why the public perception hasn’t matched the overall decades-long decreases in crime, or the decreases post pandemic.
An October Gallup poll asking Americans to characterize whether they believe crime is up, and how serious of an issue crime is, saw a drop this year over last year in the percentage of respondents who thought crime was increasing, from 77% to 64%. But the disparity between Republicans and Democrats was still high, with 90% of Republicans compared to 29% of Democrats in the most recent poll believing there is more crime.
“Why do people think it’s worse now than it’s ever been? The person they just elected tells them it’s the worst ever. Those messages from politicians have an impact,” Lawlor said, adding that politicians from both parties try to avoid being labeled soft on crime.
Experts at the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab have been diving deeper into the data to look beyond crime being up or down.
In an analysis released in December, researchers found that the lethality of shootings had increased by almost 45% since 2010, and the number of shell casings recovered per shooting victim has more than doubled in that time, meaning someone who heard a shooting in their neighborhood might hear volleys of gunfire rather than a shot or two, which can affect their perception of safety.
Smith stressed that despite the homicide rate decreasing, Black residents are still much more likely to die of gun violence than their white counterparts, a staggering 22 times more likely in Chicago.
“It’s a question of who is seeing the benefits of that progress because of the way violence is concentrated,” she said. “Even though they are safer, that burden still exists disproportionately in communities of color. That to me seems to be the perception difference.”
