Colorado Springs sees decline in total crime, increase in violent crimes

Crime is going down in Colorado Springs and Pueblo despite population increases in both cities, according to new statistics released by the FBI.

That’s good!

But the number of violent crimes went up in nearly every category.

That’s bad.

It’s also not unexpected — we reported back in January when the preliminary numbers showing the trend were released by the FBI. That list only included the first six months of the year, but the full year’s stats were just put out this week.

The number of crimes in Colorado Springs went down from 35,902 in 2016 to 33,256 in 2017; a large part of that is the significant decrease in property crimes. The FBI report says there were:

about 100 fewer burglaries 350 fewer shoplifting cases a few hundred fewer thefts 1,400 fewer incidents of vandalism

More vehicles were stolen in 2017 than in 2016, but the number of burglaries from motor vehicles dropped by about 650. Pueblo saw an increase in both of those categories.

But the feeling that the city has seen more violence is backed up by the statistics. Colorado Springs already broke last year’s homicide record (there were 26 homicides in 2016, 32 in 2017 and 33 so far this year.)

Assaults hovered with slight upticks — 1,406 aggravated assaults in 2016 to 1,502 in 2017 and 2,405 simple assaults in 2016 to 2,437 in 2017 — and while the number of sexual assaults went down by about 50, the number of rapes went up by 32 to 352.

Interestingly enough, one category that saw zero incidents in 2016 but an increase of 32 in 2017 was hacking. That’s probably due to the discovery of Russian hackers targeting Colorado Springs, including the U.S. Anti-doping Agency.

When the preliminary statistics were first released, Colorado Springs was the only larger city in Colorado to see an increase in every violent crime category, but the final report assuaged those concerns. We still saw the increases, but hey, at least we’re not the only ones — Denver caught up and saw increases in multiple violent categories.

You can read the 2017 report by clicking HERE. The FBI has similar data reports for years going back to 2011.