The city of San Diego consistently ranks among the safest big cities in the U.S., but last year — when it came to violent crime — it was the safest.

According to FBI data released this week, police investigated 5,221 violent crimes in 2017, giving San Diego a rate of 3.7 crimes per 1,000 people, fewer than New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Chicago. The FBI tracks four kinds of violent crimes: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

While San Diego regularly logs the lowest murder rate of the country’s 10 largest cities — it did last year with a murder rate of 2.5 killings per 100,000 residents — 2017 was the first time in at least five years that San Diego recorded the lowest overall violent crime rate.


The city also saw the second lowest property crime rate of the biggest cities, at 18.4 crimes per 1,000 residents. New York had the lowest, with a rate of 14.5.

Both violent crime and property crime rates were slightly down from the year before, mirroring a downtick seen across the country, according to the data. Nationally, violent crime decreased 0.2 percent when compared to 2016 and property crime fell 3 percent.

Although San Diego County saw a slight increase in violent crime in the first half of 2018 when compared to the year before, the region continues to enjoy historically low crime rates.

“Given that we are such a large U.S. city, I don’t think anyone would be surprised if our crime rate was higher,” said Cynthia Burke, director of criminal justice research at the San Diego Association of Governments. “I’m baffled by it.”


Burke isn’t the only one who wrestles with the “why” to explain the falling crime numbers. It’s a topic that has been debated among criminologists since the 1990s, when crime across the nation plummeted.

“They’re still talking about it… and it’s still worthy of research because it’s still happening,” said Charis Kubrin, a criminology professor and researcher at UC Irvine.

Theories for the decline abound. Some credit a decline in the crack trade and mass incarceration, while others the hiring of more law enforcement officers and the development of data-driven policing. There’s data to suggest that income growth, a decrease in alcohol consumption nationwide and an aging population each played a role.

Conversely, gang activity and gun markets are generally factors that fuel violent crime.


New explanations continue to crop up, like the exploding popularity of video games.

“When you think about who’s most likely to sit at home on their computer and play video games, its young men… ,” said Kubrin. “Which means that they’re not hanging out on the corner, getting in trouble.”

Some suspect San Diego’s low crime rate is related to its high immigrant population, theorizing that certain characteristics of immigrants act as a sort of buffer against crime.

For example, many immigrants tend to arrive with families that include children and grandparents who go on to live in the same house. More adults in a house can mean higher incomes and more supervision for children, both which have the potential to affect crime.


Burke, with SANDAG, said some of the low numbers may be a reflection of the changing nature of crime, as well. The data released Monday is part of the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which doesn’t collect crimes like identity theft — an offense that’s on the rise, Burke said.

Community members choosing to report crime less often would also affect the crime rate.

The FBI data also painted a positive picture of the county as a whole.

According to an analysis by The San Diego Union-Tribune, the region logged the sixth-lowest violent crime rate of the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas. These geographic regions typically include a core, densely-populated city — with at least 50,000 people — and its surrounding regions.


Nearly 11,300 violent crimes were recorded across the county in 2017, which is about 3.4 crimes per 1,000 people. The Houston region had the highest rate in the country with nearly six violent crimes per 1,000 people.

The region logged the third-lowest property crime rate in the country, according to the Union-Tribune analysis. There were 56,800 incidents reported in 2017 for a rate of 17 per 1,000 people.

Two metropolitan regions – Chicago, Naperville and Elgin, in Illinois, and St. Louis, Mo. – did not report violent crime data for the FBI’s analysis and were not included in the ranking. Five regions that did not report property crimes were not included either.


Twitter: @LAWinkley


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lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com