CrimeBeat: Is crime increasing or decreasing in Santa Rosa?

CrimeBeat Q&A is a weekly feature where reporters answer readers' questions about local crimes and the law.

Is crime increasing or decreasing in Santa Rosa?

While there's no single answer to that question, crime in Santa Rosa mirrors national trends, with violent crime hitting near-historic lows over the past decade despite trending up recently.

Santa Rosa is safer than the national average for both violent and property crimes. Nationwide there were about 386 violent crimes per 100,000 people and 2,451 property crimes per 100,000 people in 2016, according to the FBI. In Santa Rosa there were 373 violent crimes and 1,706 property crimes per 100,000 people, according to FBI numbers.

Yet violent crime jumped almost 8 percent from 2015 to 2016, from about 345 incidents of violent crime per 100,000 people to 373, according to the most recent data available from the FBI's Uniform Crime Statistics report. Nationally, violent crime, which includes murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault, increased by 4.1 percent.

Comparing numbers over a decade, violent crime in Santa Rosa has dropped by 26 percent from 2006 to 2016, even with the recent increase.

Property crimes in Santa Rosa plummeted by 43.2 percent from 2016 to 2015, far outpacing the nationwide drop of 1.3 percent.

For Santa Rosa Police Lt. Mike Lazzarini, who oversees the city's crime investigations units, the ebb and flow of crime statistics year-to-year don't always give context or show the realities on the ground.

Lazzarini said given the relatively low number of crimes in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County cities means a weekend crime spree by a few people can skew statistics for a year.

This can also be seen in the way statistics are crunched.

According to crime stats, Cotati was the most dangerous of the nine cities in Sonoma County with a violent crime rate of nearly 495 incidents per 100,000 people, 128 percent of the national average.

The problem is Cotati has a population of just under 7,500 and had zero reported homicides and 37 incidents of violent crime for 2016. To inflate the numbers to a uniform rate per 100,000 skews the data. In 2016, Cotati had less than one incident of violent crime per week.

Submit your questions about crime, safety and criminal justice to Staff Writer Nick Rahaim at 707-521-5203 or nick.rahaim@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nrahaim.