News Details

Aurora Police Release Final 2011 Crime Statistics

Final crime statistics released today by the Aurora Police showed 2.05% reduction in violent crime last year along with an all-time low in confirmed firearm discharges.

Murders, sexual assaults, and aggravated batteries were all down last year by 50%, 9.38%, and 8.17% respectively. Confirmed firearm discharges were down another 20% in 2011 to 60, the lowest number since 1996 when Aurora Police first began keeping those statistics and 357 were reported.

Major crimes, known more commonly as “Part One Index Crimes”, include the violent crime categories of murder, criminal sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault/battery; and the property crime categories of burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.

Robberies were the only violent crime category that increased last year, going up 28.32%.

For property crimes, thefts, motor vehicle thefts, and arsons all decreased last year. Thefts and motor vehicle thefts decreased by 2.46% and 2.9% respectively, while arsons dropped by 35.48%. However, burglaries increased almost 15.49%. There were a total of 4462 Part One Crimes reported last year in Aurora, an increase of 30 crimes over 2010, or 0.68%.

Long-term crime trends as measured by the City’s crime rate per 100,000 population continued to plummet in all of the major crime categories. Violent crime is down 30.12% over 5 years, 50.43% over 10 years, and 64.86% over 20 years. Over the same periods, property crime is down 31.16%, 43.76%, and 67.25%. Overall crime is down in Aurora by 31.01% since 2006; 44.79% since 2001; and 66.94% since 1991.

Chief of Police Greg Thomas said, “Some of our crime reduction strategies worked as evidenced by the drop in six of the eight major crime categories. Those that did not work as we had hoped last year are being reevaluated and fine-tuned. In fact, we’ve seen dramatic drops of 20% in robberies and 18% in burglaries comparing the first two months of 2011 to the first two months of 2012.”

“Both the decrease in violent crime last year and the dramatic drop over the past 5 years continue to demonstrate that Aurora is a safe city,” said Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner. “I applaud the men and women of the APD for the incredible strides we have made and I am encouraged that new strategies being pursued by our police officers to combat robberies and burglaries are already proving to be effective.”

The crime statistics are known as Uniform Crime Report numbers (UCRs) and are submitted to the FBI, Illinois State Police, and other agencies for official crime reporting purposes.

Other numbers released today showed a 2% uptick in the number of vehicle crashes from 4842 in 2010 to 4937 in 2011.

Location: Aurora, Illinois