According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program’s release on Monday, crime in the United States increased last year for the first time in 10 years.
Crime in 2001 has risen 2.1 percent from 2000’s report.
This figure does not include the events of Sept. 11.
There was an estimated 11.8 million Crime Index offenses; these offenses include murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft.
Murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault are the four categories of violent crime, which have risen 0.8 percent, according to the FBI statistics.
Robberies increased 3.7 percent, murders increased 2.5 percent, forcible rapes rose 0.3 percent and aggravated assault volumes decreased 0.5 percent from the 2000 statistics.
Bruce Harber, director of public safety for The University of Memphis, said crimes on campus have decreased this year from last year.
“Crime is down over 22 percent for this year,” Harber said. “If you talk about violent crimes, we’ve had five robberies and two aggravated assault offenses but no rape and no homicide.”
Harber also said rape on The U of M campus is almost non-existent.
“I’ve been here three years, and we’ve had only one reported rape and that was off campus,” Harber said.
The U of M and the FBI use the same classifications for violent crime.
There have been several other published crime statistics putting Memphis at the top of some “most dangerous” lists.
Morgan Quitno, a state and city ranking publication, places Memphis in tenth place in the “most dangerous city” rankings.
LaTonya Able of the Memphis Police Department urged Memphians to be careful with these types of statistics because they usually come from different special-interest groups or publications.
“The numbers can reflect whatever you want them to depending on how you manipulate them,” Ables said.
