FBI 2019 Crime Report: See Trends In North Andover And MA

NORT ANDOVER, MA — Violent and property crimes both decreased in North Andover last year, according to data released by the FBI in its 2019 uniform crime report. Statewide, both violent and property crime fell, for the ninth consecutive year.

In Massachusetts, the FBI estimated crime statistics based on reports from 365 of the state’s 422 law enforcement agencies.

The data shows violent crime went down in Massachusetts from 2018 to 2019, from 340.3 offense per hundred thousand people to 327.6. Property crime went down as well, from 1273.6 to 1179.8.

North Andover reported fewer violent crime offenses, 17, in 2019 than in 2018, when it reported 35. The property crime fall was smaller, from 178 to 169.

Most of the town's property crimes, 139, were thefts.

Detective Lieutenant Eric Foulds of North Andover Police said that the town's violent crime rate is low enough that the variation in violent crime is likely random variation.

The town saw a couple of bad years for violent crime, 2017 and 2018, then those numbers came back down.

Property crimes have been fairly steady, after a spike in 2014 to 2016.

"That's when we were getting killed in the car breaks," Foulds said. "They were going around fishing, trying doors to see if they were unlocked. We did a huge information campaign in town to get people to lock their cars, and that just stopped."

Since then, the bulk of the town's property crimes have been shoplifting, with dozens of incidents every year. Most of those cases are cleared by the police, Foulds said.

Foulds said that before the pandemic, crime had been steady in 2020, but both property and violent crime dropped beginning in March. Calls for mental health issues, alcohol and domestic violence increased, and the department has received more reports about scams in recent weeks, he said.

The department has also had a new type of call to respond to: large gatherings.

"We're not ticketing people," Foulds said of those calls. "We just trying to educate."

Nationwide, the FBI reported a decrease in both violent and property crime from year to year. Violent crime went from a rate of 383.4 per 100,000 people in 2018 to 379.4 a year later, a decrease of about 0.5 percent. It's the third straight year violent crime decreased nationally, the FBI said.

Property crime numbers with the same control went from 2,209.8 to 2,109.9. There’s been a downward trend nationwide in this category since 2009, with a decrease of 4.1 percent from 2018 to 2019.

Violent crimes are labeled as homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault; property crimes are listed as arson, burglary, larceny theft and motor vehicle theft.

The nationwide downward crime trends continued into 2020, according to an overview of numbers from the first half of the year the FBI released a few weeks ago. But two subcategories in particular, murder and arson, have seen a significant increase in the six months that include the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic.

Murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases reported to the FBI by the 16,554 agencies that submitted last year’s data increased by 14.8 percent from the first half of 2019 to the same period in 2020. Arson increased by an even greater rate — 19.2 percent, the FBI said.

The FBI has issued a caution about the crime data coming in at the local levels.

Lists comparing cities and counties "do not provide insight into the numerous variables that shape crime in a given state, county, city, town, tribal area or region," the FBI said in a statement.

"These rankings lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that can create misleading perceptions that adversely affect communities and their residents,” the statement continued. “Only through careful study and analyses into the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction can data users create valid assessments of crime."