Pittsburgh saw more violent crime in 2016 than 2015 with increases in reported robberies, rapes and aggravated assaults, according to data released Monday by the FBI.
The city’s overall violent crime increased by about 9 percent in 2016. Reported robberies increased by 17 percent, rapes by 22 percent and aggravated assaults by 3 percent, according to the FBI’s data, which the agency collects from police departments across the country and releases annually.
Murders in Pittsburgh remained flat, with 57 people killed in both 2015 and 2016.
The increase in violent crime reflects a national trend: across the country, violent crime rose by 4.1 percent, marking the second consecutive increase. However, that national upswing was driven primarily by an 8.6 percent jump in murders, while in Pittsburgh, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults drove the increase according to the FBI’s data.
“The thing that has attracted the most national attention has been the growth in homicides, which is attributable mostly to a limited number of large cities,” said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist and professor emeritus at the Heinz College of Carnegie Mellon University. He added that it’s encouraging to see homicides remain flat in the city.
Mr. Blumstein speculated that the increase in robberies could reflect growing opioid use in the city. Nationally, robberies increased by just 1 percent, according to the FBI.
“Growth in robbery is often associated with a demand for drugs,” Mr. Blumstein said.
While violent crime rose in the city, it remained nearly flat and may have decreased slightly across the state as a whole, the data shows.
The FBI reported a 0.26 percent increase in violent crime across the state. However, that includes more than 400 rapes that one woman reported to authorities in Schuylkill County, said Bret Bucklen, director of planning, research and statistics at the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
While the rapes allegedly occurred over her lifetime, Mr. Bucklen said, they were all counted as occurring in November 2016.
When you take those 400 rapes out of the equation, Mr. Bucklen said, reported rapes in the state actually decreased in 2016, which in turn means overall violent crime went down, albeit by less than 1 percent.
“We were that close that when you account for that one incident, it flips from rape being up in Pennsylvania to rape being down in Pennsylvania, which means violent crime went down in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Bucklen said.
Aside from violent crime, Pittsburgh saw a less than 1 percent reduction in property crime. Burglaries dropped by 17 percent in 2016, while motor vehicle vehicle thefts rose by 36 percent.
Shelly Bradbury: 412-263-1999, sbradbury@post-gazette.com or follow @ShellyBradbury on Twitter.
First Published: September 27, 2017, 10:24 p.m.
