Yearly crime numbers released, but they don’t reflect shootings

Missouri was the eighth most violent state in the country in 2017 according to FBI numbers released this week.

However, numbers also show a decrease in violent crime in Columbia so far this year.

According to the FBI, more than 7,000 cases of violent crime were reported in Missouri in 2017. Missouri’s violent crime rate per person has been consistently higher than the U.S. as a whole every year for the last 10 years.

In 2017, almost 50 percent of violent crime happened at someone’s home. In more than 60 percent of the cases reported, the offender was a stranger to the victim. Offenders in Missouri were most often between the age of 20-29 and were mostly men in 2017.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics, the violent crime rate in Columbia has gone down and it has stayed the same in Boone County since last year.

However, local investigators caution that the crime numbers do not include shootings, which have become a frequent occurrence.

According to Columbia police dispatching logs, there have been 126 confirmed incidents in which shots were fired in 2017, and according to those reports, people have heard gunshots almost every day.

Boone County Sheriff’s Department Detective Tom O’Sullivan said shootings have peaked and they are not shown in the crime numbers.

“The one thing UCR doesn’t report on is all the incidences of shots fired,” O’Sullivan said.

O’Sullivan said the scene is common in the county and in Columbia — deputies or police officers get called to a report of shots fired, but when they get there, they only find shell casings. O’Sullivan said he still considers such incidents violent crimes.

“That is a violent crime when you have people shooting out in the middle of the street,” O’Sullivan said.

Rape, violent crime and homicides are significantly lower in Columbia this year. There were nine homicides last year and three have been reported so far this year. But those reports do not account for the more than 80 shootings since the start of the year in Columbia.

O’Sullivan said the problem is too many guns.

“People don’t fist fight anymore, they just pull out guns,” he said.

He said the county sheriff’s department is proactive, increasing its enforcement in certain areas to keep those numbers down.

No one with the Columbia Police Department was willing to go on the record with ABC 17 News about what the department is doing to drive these shooting numbers down.