LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — For the first time this year, Little Rock is seeing less violent crime than we saw at this time last year.
A graph from the City of Little Rock shows January had a 74% increase in violent crime compared to the beginning of 2021.
The numbers went down, but started to climb again. By March, we saw a decline and have continued to go down. For the first time, we have less violent crime than in 2021.
In Little Rock, violent crime stats count homicides, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.
With each of those combined our violent crime is down 3% from this time last year.
"We are safer today as it relates to violent crime than we were last year," said Mayor Frank Scott Jr.
However, individually, crimes such as homicides and robbery are still up.
We're at 44 homicides this year, which is 10 more than last year. Meanwhile, robberies are up 49%.
In the last 5 years, Arkansas's violent crimes are up across the board by 13%.
Mayor Frank Scott Jr. attributes the improvements in crime to new community programs and the LRPD's hard work.
One program that the mayor mentioned teaches middle schoolers how to defuse situations with conflict resolution skills.
Additionally, he said that midnight basketball is coming back for kids soon.
"It helps when you have something for our children to do during the summer months. It helps to diffuse a lot of things," said Mayor Scott.
The Little Rock Police Department has met weekly to look at the numbers and talk about how to prevent them from getting higher.
"Drill into the homicides. What is the motive? Why are they occurring? And particularly do we see anything that leads us to this may cause another violent crime and then we put resources to that," said LRPD Interim Chief Wayne Bewley.
Chief Bewley said the clearance rate for solving homicides is at 70%, which is above the national average.