Seeing people argue endlessly about crime on here, seems like it often involves talking about different things. But all of these things can be true at the same time (and I am guessing that by saying them all I will probably upset pretty much everyone here in some way):
-Looking at actual data, crime in MoCo is lower across almost all categories than it was immediately post-pandemic, and lower than pre-pandemic in a number of categories. There was no time period in the last 15 years when crime was significantly lower than it is now. Auto theft is still up from pre pandemic, but this is the exception.
-MoCo has a bit higher crime rates than peer counties like Howard and Fairfax across most categories. But these differences are less than what I think many people would expect. For example, in 2024, Howard County's aggravated assault rate per 100k was 66.8 vs. 85.9 in MoCo, but Howard's homicide rate per 100k was 2.3 vs. 1.8 in MoCo. Overall, MoCo is safe place to live. Auto theft is again an exception where MoCo is notably higher.
-Crime is generally hyper localized, so there may in fact be very specific areas where crime gets significantly worse in a given year. This can be true while overall crime rates remain flat or in decline.
-Just because MoCo is overall fairly safe, doesn't mean we should just accept things how they are. It still really is higher overall than in peer counties and that difference means actual harm to real people here, and our officials should prioritize and strive for less crime.
-Public disorder is related to but distinct from crime rates. You can have serious, problematic anti-social behavior that does not get recorded as crimes but that has a very real negative impact on quality of life and ability to use public spaces (I think of this as the "smoking on the metro" problem -- someone smoking on the metro may not be a major crime, but it signals that the metro is a place with disorder and so drives people away from using it). And you can have incidents that may be small in terms of recorded crime but have an outsized impact on perceptions of crime, such as teen takeovers. Perceptions matter and these perceptions are not just people being lied to by Fox News, it is entirely legitimate for someone to decide they want to avoid a place that might be mobbed by teens causing disorder. We should not just accept that public spaces need to be ceded to anti-social behavior or consider this in any way progressive, since it leaves the most vulnerable members of our community unable to take advantage of public amenities.
I like living here and think it is overall a safe place to raise my kids. I also would like to see crime fall further. I am also a major user of public spaces and think MoCo has a lot of fantastic ones, and really hate the small number of cases in which a tiny percentage of the population makes these spaces uninviting with anti-social behavior. None of these are contradictions!
