CPD reports murder increased in 2024, while assault, rape, sodomy fell
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Columbia Police Department released its crime statistics for 2024 on Friday.
A news conference was held at 10:30 a.m. Friday at Columbia City Hall to discuss the statistics.
Columbia Police Chief Jill Schlude said the 2023-24 use of force audits was one of her priorities as police chief in order to improve the accuracy and availability of data.
"We really wanted to make sure we got these numbers as close as possible," Schlude said.
During the press conference Friday, Schlude said the numbers were released later than normal because the department did a review to ensure accuracy.
CPD Records Management Administrator Sarah Jones said she revised the numbers to fit the definition of the crime under the federal guidelines.
"They were going off the fact that they used the word rape was classified as a forcible rape when the actual acts that support the crime did not occur," Assistant Chief Lance Bolinger said.
According to CPD, the department found some sexual offenses were incorrectly categorized and there was overreporting in some areas.
The report shows there were 13 murders in 2024. The total number of murders in 2023 was seven.
CPD reports it made an arrest in each of the 2024 homicides and referred them for prosecution.
"Any homicide is one too many, I think Chief Jill Schlude did a good job on how last year was an un-normal low, the number 13 has been happening for over a number of years," Columbia Mayor Barbara Buffaloe said.
Assaults came in at the highest in the report, with 1,746 being reported, though it decreased from 1,775 from the year before. Schlude said many of those assaults were domestic, but they will work to bring those numbers down.
"Education, domestic assault is folded into these numbers and that is an important thing to remember, that could be some place where we could move the needle a little more because have some tools in the toolkit for that," Schlude said.
Crimes against property -- which includes robbery, burglary, motor vehicles thefts -- were down overall 7.27% from 2023-24. Robbery, burglary, motor vehicle thefts and shoplifting all increased, but there were decreases in stealing vehicle parts, stealing from vehicles, stealing from buildings and "all other larceny."
Crimes against society was down approximately 2.25%, which includes crimes such as drugs and pornography.
From 2023-24 crimes against persons such as murder, rape, sodomy, fondling and assault was down 3.5% according to CPD. There were 34 reported instances of rape in 2024, which is down from 59 in 2023. Sodomy also declined from 18 in 2023 to 12 in 2024. Fondling declined from 75 reports in 2023 to 14 in 2024.
Use-of-force data
Police use-of-force numbers for 2023 were also released Friday by CPD. In total it said members of CPD generated 176 use-of-force reports against 209 residents. Those include incidents with multiple officers, multiple residents and multiple applications of force.
A majority (59.33%) of use-of-force incidents in 2023 occurred against Black residents. Data also shows that 39.23% of uses-of-force occurred against white residents, while 0.96% occurred against Hispanics and 0.48% occurred against Native Americans.
A 10-year-old was the youngest person who had force used against them, while a 70-year-old was the oldest, the data shows.
The types of force available for selection in Blue Team software include:
- Balance Displacement
- Bola Wrap
- Canine Bite
- Canine Display
- Chemical Agents
- Diversionary Device
- Drawing/Exhibiting Firearm
- Discharge of Firearm at Person
- Other Impact weapons
- Joint Manipulation
- Kinetic Energy Impact Device (Less Lethal Shotgun)
- Other Lethal Force
- Other Physical Force
- Pepper Spray
- Pressure Point Technique
- Strikes
- Taser Deployment/Drive Stun
- Taser Laser/Arc Display
Buffaloe says all reports come down to transparency.
"So you can know why we are putting our efforts our resources in certain areas, if you're just getting your information from social media you might not be getting the full picture and it actual might be flawed and confusing the situation," Buffaloe said.
Schlude also announced a new public-facing online dashboard where community members can find timely crime data. The department expects it to be released this summer.
