During this year’s annual citywide budget briefing, Chandler Police Chief Bryan Chapman said “crime is down.”
Thats true — sort of.
Violent crime dropped off significantly in Chandler Police Department reporting in 2024, but property crime rates remain high in the city.
Violent crimes decreased 23% in Chandler in 2024, from 505 to 389, marking the third straight year of decreases, according to statistics from the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
Meanwhile, property crimes, driven largely by an uptick in reported shoplifting, went up about 3% over the course of 2024.
Nationally, in 2023, the last full year for which FBI statistics are available, the same sort of drop in the same four violent crimes that Chandler would experience a year later.
In property crimes, however, Chandler had an increase of shoplifting occurrences, from about 1,200 to about 1,900, that was the main reason for that property crime increase.
Overall violent crimes, according to the state’s Department of Public Safety, went down from 505 to 389 in 2024, according to a report, for four high-visibility categories: murder, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault.
Chandler had eight murders in 2023, compared to only two in 2024. Sexual assaults went down from 110 to 51 — a drop of 54% — and robberies dipped slightly, from 80 to 67.
Aggravated assaults went down from 307 to 269.
Violent crime has dropped each of the past three years, according to DPS, with a slight uptick happening from 2020 to 2021. The total number reported for the four categories was as high as 647 as recently as 2017.
Chandler property crime cases cleared for four major categories went from 4,131 to 4,248. That was largely because the increase in shoplifting — one of several types of larceny crimes — drove the larceny category up by about 8%
Meanwhile, burglaries dropped by 12% and motor vehicle thefts declined by nearly one-third, 30%.
The statistics can be viewed at azcrimestatistics.azdps.gov/tops.
Nationally, violent crime dipped in the U.S. 3% from January 2023 to January 2024 from the year prior, while murder was down 11.6%, rape declined by 9.4%, robbery nearly held steady with a 0.3% drop and aggravated assaults were down 2.8%.
Property crime also went down in 2023 from 2022, by 2.4% overall. Burglary dropped by 7.6% and larceny declined 4.4%, though motor vehicle theft actually went up by 12.6%.
Jason W. Brooks News Editor | Chandler Independent
Jason W. Brooks joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in July 2021 as an associate editor. After a year covering Buckeye, he has covered Chandler since the fall of 2022, in addition to assisting the Daily Independent throughout his time at INI.
Education: University of New Mexico, bachelor of arts in journalism and mass communication, print emphasis, English minor.
Random Fact: He and his siblings witnessed a Space Shuttle launch and landing in the same year in person, on opposite coasts.
Hobbies: Karaoke, bicycling and American Sign Language.
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