HOUSTON — The year 2020 was plagued with a whole host of problems, one of the biggest being the pandemic.
But we’re finally getting a look on how the pandemic impacted crime with numbers from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Annual Crime Report.
There’s some good news, but a lot of bad.
For starters, murders in the entire state increased a whopping 37 percent from 1,403 murders in 2019 to 1,927 in 2020.
Aggravated assaults also increased by 16.4 percent.
But some good news: other violent crimes, rape and robbery actually dropped throughout the state. Rape crimes dropped 9 percent, and robberies dropped 7.3 percent.
The total violent crimes were higher in 2020 than any other year in the past decade.
When it comes to property crimes, burglary (-3.9 percent) and larceny (-7.0 percent) decreased, but motor vehicle thefts went up. (+8.9 percent).
Assaults on police officers also went up nearly 8.7 percent.
Crimes in Houston and Harris County have also increased. In 2020, Houston Police reported 400 murders, up from 275 in 2019, and Harris County reported 135 murders, up from 97 in 2019.
Together, the county and city’s murder count makes up nearly 30 percent of the total murders throughout the state.
But one interesting detail: between the months of February and May, the beginning of the pandemic and the height of quarantine, crimes were the lowest then than the rest of the year.
For a look at the full report, click here.