Is it safer to live in Fresno than it was a year ago? Here’s what the statistics say
The most heinous crimes in Fresno fell in 2024 from the previous year, according to figures presented Monday by the police department, matching recent national trends.
The eight violent crimes tracked by the FBI were particularly high in 2020 amid civil unrest and the Coronavirus pandemic, and have trended down each year since.
In Fresno, there were 30 intentional homicides in 2024, down from 35 the previous year. It was also a significant fall from the gruesome high of 74 in each of 2021 and 2020, according to Fresno Police Department figures.
That is a 14% decrease in Fresno in murder cases, which was on pace with the national decrease of 15.6%.
Police said they solved almost as many murder cases as were added to the tally this year with a clearance rate of 97%, according to interim Police Chief Mindy Casto.
“None of this happens by accident. It’s a lot of hard work,” she said.
Rapes fell by 16.6% last year and robberies were down by 1.6%, police said. Both commercial (21.2% decline) and residential (11.9%) burglaries also fell. All of those crimes have also declined nationally.
There were 221 shootings in 2024 in Fresno, a 38.4% decrease from the previous year. Those numbers are more than the 107 people who were shot, and includes cars, buildings and times people were fired upon but not struck.
There were more than three times as many shootings in 2020.
Mayor Jerry Dyer touted the statistics.
“The message to the people who live in the city of Fresno or shop here or work here is very simple, and that is Fresno is a much safer place today than it was in 2021 and over the last three years,” he said.
The Fresno Police Department employs 861 police officers and has a budget for 926, police said.
Both Dyer and Casto attribute the declines to adding officers to the department. There were around 650 officers in the department back in 2021.
Scholarly research does not necessarily agree with that take. Some studies find no correlation between police spending and a decrease in violent crime, and Fresno’s declining rates mirror national trends.
Though there remains a stubborn perception problem. The latest Gallup poll says 64% of Americans who answered said they believed crime was higher in the nation than the previous year.
The numbers say they are wrong.
Murder cases were down 15 percent in 63 cities of 250,000 or larger, according to nationally recognized analyst and independent criminologist Jeff Asher, who analyzed public data.
The nation’s reported violent and property crimes were likely among the lowest rates recorded since the 1960s and 1970s, his analysis says.
“Intelligent people can (and will) disagree about the causes of and preferred policy solutions to these issues, but there should be little doubt about the overall direction of major crime in America in 2024,” he wrote.
