SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif — After an uptick in crime during the pandemic, crime in San Diego County now appears to be on the decline.
That's according to a new report issued by SANDAG, which is now using a more comprehensive and detailed way of tracking everything from homicides to auto theft to animal cruelty.
This new report tracks the number of crimes reported during the first six months of this year, compared to the first six month of last year.
There has been an increase in some categories of crime, like aggravated assault, but crime has overall dropped in all major San Diego County areas.
According to this new report by SANDAG, crimes against people, like murder, simple assault, kidnapping and rape, have decreased by six percent compared to the same time last year.
Crimes against property, which make up over half of all crimes reported, declined by nine percent. These include robbery, burglary, auto thefts and arson.
"Overall, this report has shown that the San Diego County region has experienced a steady decrease since the pandemic spike that we saw in 2021," said San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria.
Since the 1990s, crime in San Diego had been dropping steadily, but ticked upward during the pandemic.
"That disruption seems to be coming back to normal," said Octavio Rodriguez, principal criminal justice researcher at SANDAG. "And it's positive because we are seeing that despite what happened in COVID, things seem positive moving forward."
Rodriguez said that for the first time ever, crimes against society, such as drug violations, gambling offenses, pornography and weapons violations. were also tracked, showing a five percent drop overall.
This is part of a revamped — and far more comprehensive — system of collecting crime data, compared to the old method, which dated back roughly a century.
Under the previous system, for instance, if one incident included more than one crime, only the most serious offense would be counted.
"This new system has the capacity to track up to ten crimes on the same incident so we get a much better understanding of each particular incident," Rodriguez told CBS 8.
Crime did rise in certain specific areas, such as aggravated assaults (up 4 percent), intimidation (up 5 percent).and prostitution, which increased 40 percent.
Still, Rodriguez pointed out that the San Diego region remains one of the safest in the country.
"Numbers have been going down and stayed even below the national average in terms of crimes," he added.
To take a closer look at this new SANDAG report, which also breaks down crime stats by city, click here.
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