COLUMBUS – Violent crime in central Ohio declined last year, led by a dramatic drop in the number of murders following a record-setting year in Columbus.
The murder rate in the Columbus metropolitan area fell from 7.9 per 100,000 residents in 2017, when 142 homicides were recorded in Columbus, to 6.1 last year, according to the annual Crime in the United States report from the FBI.
That is a decline of almost 23 percent and mirrors the 24 percent drop in the statewide murder rate from 2017 to 2018, according to the report released Monday.
Violent crime across the nation declined 3.3 percent between 2017 and 2018, 5.7 percent in Ohio, and property crime decreased 6.3 percent during the same time period.
The annual crime statistics report is produced by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, data voluntarily reported to the FBI by more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.
The rate of violent crimes committed in central Ohio in 2018 was 282.4 percent 100,000 residents, a 2.8 percent decline.
In 2018, there were about 1.2 million violent crimes across the nation.
Nearly every category of violent crime decreased between 2017 and 2018, with the exception of rape offenses, which increased 2.7 percent.
Ohio saw a 9.3 percent decline in the number of reported rapes. The only category of crime to increase in Ohio last year was aggravated assaults.