The Durango Police Department says a spike in crime that occurred last year when law enforcement was more focused on enforcing public health orders has subsided, and the city returned to pre-pandemic crime levels in 2021.
The police department reported year-end crime statistics at Tuesday’s Durango City Council meeting.
The city of Durango had 726 “Part 1” crimes committed in 2021, down nearly 200 from 918 in 2020.
“Part 1 crimes are major crimes that the FBI classifies,” said Durango Police Chief Bob Brammer. Those types of crimes are murder, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and larceny.”
He noted 2021 numbers are still being tallied, as the year hasn’t ended.
“We don’t have the fourth quarter recorded yet, because we’re still in December,” he said.
According to the statistics, Brammer said the city’s crime rates seem to be normalizing after significant increases related to the pandemic.
“Where we would normally put our efforts into reducing theft, we were doing other things during the pandemic,” he said. “Things like investigating public health order investigations.”
In 2020, the police department noticed a significant spike in burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft.
Two of the department’s goals for 2021 were to decrease violent crimes and motor vehicle thefts. Both goals were achieved, as Durango saw a 15% decrease in violent crimes, and a 31% decrease in motor vehicle thefts.
“This year we were able to refocus a lot of our efforts,” Brammer said. “Really what we tried to do was to take away opportunity for serious crimes.”
He said the department was able to achieve its goals by identifying places where violent crimes and theft were happening. Focusing efforts and directing officers to the identified high-crime areas hindered the opportunity for smaller crimes to develop into major crimes.
“What we’ve found out is when someone commits a minor crime, it can potentially escalate into more problematic things,” he said. “We took away that opportunity through the minor portions of that, and it’s paid benefits in being able to drive down some of the petty stuff while at the same time driving down major types of crime as well.”
One of the statistics Durango police looked at in its report was the clearance of crimes. Clearance refers specifically to cases that are solved by the police department.
“Clearance rates are basically the solvability factor of a crime,” Brammer said. “Sometimes that involves arrests and sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on what it is. Ultimately, the solvability factor means we figured out who did it.”
DPD compared its clearance percentage on crimes to the state of Colorado. Out of 292 larceny and theft cases, the DPD had a clearance rate of 23% compared with an 11% clearance rate statewide. For burglaries, the city has a 21% clearance rate compared with the state’s overall 13% clearance rate.
DPD had a clearance rate of 27% in fraud cases, whereas the state has a 7% clearance. Motor vehicle theft had a clearance rate of 45% in Durango, and an 8% clearance rate statewide.
While the city has a 73% clearance rate of violent crimes for 2021, there were only 41 cases of violent crime in the past year. Statewide there were nearly 24,000 violent crime cases for a clearance rate of 39%.
“We’re doing a better job than the rest of the state on average,” Brammer said. “It’s not going to be statistically proportional to population.”
Brammer said he’d like to continue to bring down the number of motor vehicle thefts in the city. Most car thefts are not the result of people breaking into vehicles and hot-wiring them, he said.
“Those cars are not being hot-wired or jimmied open,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of those cars are being left unlocked by residents with the keys in them.”
Brammer said stolen cars are often used to commit other crimes, and therefore, bringing down motor vehicle theft will bring down crime overall.
njohnson@durangoherald.com
