Appleton crime trends from 1995-2020. (Chart courtesy of Appleton Police Department)
APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – As many people work to put 2020 in the rearview mirror, Appleton Police are reviewing what went right, what went wrong, and what kind of crime was most common.
“We saw some pretty dramatic fluctuations during the year,” said Police Chief Todd Thomas. “We saw a major reduction in the major crimes, but some of the minor crimes, there was an uptick.”
Due to the pandemic, there were some oddities and things that weren’t predicted going into 2020.
“Some dramatic decreases in some of the crimes like shoplifting, crimes that occur in businesses, because they were closed,” Thomas said.
But the more important decline came in violent crimes. Those are usually categorized as four different crimes: Sexual assault, robberies, aggravated assaults, homicide.
“Overall, our violent crime rate went down. And we’re looking at some of the lowest numbers that we’ve seen in Appleton since the late nineties early 2000’s, which has been trending that way for the last probably 8 or 9 years,” Thomas told WTAQ News. “Tentatively, we’re looking at about 170 of those crimes, which is about 30 lower than we had the year before and is trending about 30 or 40 lower than we have in the last five years…The violent crime rate has been trending down for several years, thankfully. And there’s a lot of reasons why that’s occurring, but I think we’re on the right track.”
Thomas says generally, violent crimes are impulsive or appear from domestic-related incidents. Domestic violence accounted for about half of the aggravated assault cases in the city in 2020, and that was fairly consistent to prior years.
“Most of our major crimes went down. Aggravated assaults were down about 12-percent, rapes were down about 40 [percent], robberies were down about 25-percent, shop-liftings were down 33-percent, a dramatic number,” Thomas said.
Violent crime rate in Appleton, 3-year average. (Chart courtesy of Appleton Police Department)
But as the more serious crimes saw a bit of a dip in action, other crimes became the main driver of the numbers and action for police in Appleton.
“The minor crimes, [like] thefts from autos, those are the ones we saw increase dramatically from 20 to [over] 60-percent…breaking into cars, actually stealing cars that were running [with] people leaving their cars running, people taking them for joy rides,” Thomas said. “We also saw some significant increases in property crime…I think a lot of that has to do with a lot of juvenile crime. Kids not in school, car-hopping, stealing from cars and causing some problems with that.”
There was a state-wide rash of catalytic converter thefts, and some of those did happen in Appleton. And as kids might’ve been getting into trouble while not in school, juvenile arrests were actually down 15.3% year-to-date in the city’s Week 47 of 2020 report.
City of Appleton week 47 crime report. Numbers as of 11/24/2020. (Courtesy of Appleton Police Department)
Meanwhile, another shocking yet not entirely surprising trend caused numbers to spike for Appleton Police.
“The biggest impact that COVID has had is on our drug crimes and our overdose deaths. We’ve seen just a horrific number of deaths. A lot of that is attributed to COVID and the mental health challenges that has brought on,” Thomas said. “I think we’re also in that pandemic of dealing with the impact of overdose deaths, abuse, and mental health. That shadow-pandemic we’ve talked about before, I think will last for several years.”
The pandemic’s overall impact on mental health brought a sobering reminder about work that still needs to be addressed. Overdose deaths more than doubled over what is typically seen in a year, with 23 (tentatively) overdose deaths in the city.
But even with the rise in drug crimes and minor theft-type incidents, Chief Thomas credits the community for the overall drop in criminal activity amid everything that went on in 2020.
“We’ve got a great community partnership. I think that’s why we see these low crime numbers, that’s why we see a crime rate that is the lowest it’s been in almost 20 years and continues to trend down. I think it’s because this community has expectations,” Thomas said. “When we have a major crime, we have an armed robbery or a shooting, it’s headline and it leads the news because it’s an anomaly. That’s what we want we want to continue to have, a type of community that that’s what the expectations are.”
That partnership appeared to only improve over the course of the year as well. Following protests over police violence during the summer following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Appleton Police worked to further improve their relationship and visibility with the community as a whole, especially BIPOC minority communities.
“Something that has been ongoing, we’ve been doing it for decades, but I think it became even more important this year and it was critical that we had those conversations and that we continue to have those conversations,” Thomas said. “It helped, but it’s an ongoing effort and project that we have to stay focused on.”
Thomas called those discussions ‘significant,’ and said it helped the department form their focuses for 2021 – including visibility and community engagement.
Looking ahead to 2021 as businesses and schools reopen, Thomas predicts they will begin to see the return of some calls they didn’t see often in 2020. He expects additional reporting, like what is typically seen when kids return to school – which can often lead to a significant uptick in child abuse, neglect cases, domestic cases, sexual assault, because children are in safe environment where school officers and social workers get those reports.
But even with that potential, Thomas says the goal for 2021 remains the same – continue pushing the trend-line down and impacting all crimes, especially the more significant offenses.
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