By: Matt Rosenberg
Wirepoints recently reported on how Illinois’ fifth-biggest city of Rockford is struggling to contain violent crime. It’s up 26 percent since 2019. A look at the numbers in Aurora shows that Illinois’ second-largest city is in the same situation.
City data shows that violent crime – which includes murder, robbery, criminal sexual assault and aggravated assault/battery – was up 38 percent in 2021 in Aurora versus the baseline pre-Covid, pre-George Floyd year of 2019.
That included a remarkable 128 percent increase in criminal sexual assault, and a 44 percent jump in aggravated assault and battery.
However over that same three-year span, murder was down by half, robbery by one-third, and burglary 42 percent.
Reported property crimes were down slightly, by two percent.
According to more-recent data provided to Wirepoints by the Aurora Police Department, and despite a decline in Covid, violent crime hasn’t started to go down yet this year.
Violent crime is still up 5 percent in early 2022 versus the same period last year, driven by aggravated assaults that are 19 percent greater.
An encouraging sign is that so far, property crimes are down 27 percent from the first trimester of the prior year, and overall reported crimes are 20 percent lower.
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Aurora Police recently offered their take on the two striking increases. They said aggravated assaults rose due to Covid and economic stressors which persisted through 2021. For the big rise criminal sexual assault, Aurora Police said more crimes were being reported because state law was changed to do away with the statute of limitations, bringing more cases forward.
If both of these explanations are right, comparable Illinois cities which currently report the same data should have seen similar increases in both subcategories over the same period. We ran some numbers to get a better sense of whether the city’s take is on the mark, or not.
Among Illinois’ 20 largest cities, four others comparable to Aurora have made both 2019 and 2021 data directly available online for criminal sexual assault and aggravated assault/battery.
None showed anything like an equivalent rise to Aurora’s in criminal sexual assault. Chicago stayed flat, and Springfield even dropped by 26 percent.
Decatur’s jump of 67 percent was notable but may be at least partly due to a slightly broader definition of sex offenses being used by the city in 2021 compared to 2019. This as Decatur shifts from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system to the more expansive National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
Overall, this limited set of data isn’t very supportive of Aurora’s claims on rising criminal sexual assault.
For aggravated assault/battery, there were two other outliers among the five total cities we surveyed. Those were Decatur, where aggravated assaults grew 86 percent, and Elgin, where they rose 63 percent.
But aggravated assaults were up by far less in Springfield, 23 percent, and by just 3 percent in Chicago. Again, the limited data we have is inconclusive.
However, Public Information Officer Paris Lewbel of the Aurora Police Department told Wirepoints the city stands by its recent analysis.
And regarding the more than doubling of criminal sexual assault reports from 2019 to 2021, he said, “when we dug through the data,” many of the reports filed in 2021 occured years back, beyond the state’s old statute of limitations. Lewbel said that “was where we saw the increases coming from.”
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Though it’s difficult to pinpoint causality, the violent crime surge in Illinois’ second biggest city should sound alarms statewide. Another long, hot and quite possibly crime-filled summer looms in Cook County and its collar counties. That includes Aurora.
Across the board, local and state politicians, as well as police and judges will need to do their utmost to send a real message of deterrence to criminals. That means arrests, prosecutions, and when warranted, convictions and incarcerations. The state’s future depends in part on their doing so.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Parents, keep an eye on your school’s sex ed curriculum. It may be more extreme than you think.
- Supporters of Amendment 1 should get their story straight. Latest double-talk is about workplace safety.
- Chief Executive Magazine ranks Illinois third-worst state for doing business, yet Illinois politicians think businesses will move here because of…“equity!”
- Chicago car thefts spike sharply in 2022, up 100% along lakefront compared to 2019
- Close the revolving door for high-risk offenders in Cook County
- Two ‘Compelled Speech’ Matters Beg For Litigation In Illinois
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
Another factor in these crime statistics is that the bad guys–especially more experienced gang leaders– figured out a few years ago that the suburban police departments are not as sophisticated as the big Chicago Police Department. Suburbs dont have the gang crime units, electronic capabilities, manpower,, or drug squad depth, so it is easier to operate in the suburbs. Aurora in particular, with it’s large minority population, saw an influx of Chicago bad guys beginning a few years ago. Same with Waukegan, North Chicago and other towns.
Richard Irvin has no business running for Governor. With the backing of billionaire Ken Griffin, he should be forcing billionaire J.B. “who never worked a day in his life” Pritzker to spend his several hundred million dollars like he did four years ago. Aurora has real crime problems and while Irvin claims to have been tough on crime and it has been reduced, the statistics say otherwise. Thanks Matt!
Irwin, mayor of Aurora, is most definitely a threat to the reelection of JB Blobster so it time for the media to start their attack. Let’s have some strongly worded editorials about the huge gas taxes of JB, the population exit from Illinois because of, gasp, high taxes, corruption, crime. How about reminding folks about toiletgate and Blobster’s attempted bribes for a big federal job from Blago. How about filling people in on the SAFE act embraced by Blobbo that is going to drive crime through the roof. Guess not, too busy cutting down a real political threat to the… Read more »
Actually, this article is one in an ongoing series of crime data analyses for larger Illinois cities. We’ve done a lot on Chicago; recently covered Rockford, now Aurora. More to come on other larger Illinois cities. We’re driven by data. Not partisan politics. Also worth noting: Aurora gets better-than-average marks for making full-year crime data available online. Only a handful of larger Illinois cities do. Many others are stuck in Web 1.0 when it comes to reporting crime data online.