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US faced surge in violent crimes during 2015, FBI says

Wednesday, 20 January 2016 12:44 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 20 January 2016 12:45 AM ]

Surge in US violent crimes during 2015 (photo by Reuters)

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation says there was a surge in violent crimes such as murder, robbery, and rape in large US cities in the year 2015.

"All of the offenses in the violent crime category — murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape… aggravated assault, and robbery — showed increases when data from the first six months of 2015 were compared with data from the first six months of 2014," said the FBI semiannual report on crime statistics released on Tuesday.

According to the report, the number of rape cases increased 9.6 percent, murders rose 6.2 percent, aggravated assaults upped 2.3 percent, and robbery offenses surged 0.3 percent.

The report further noted that increases in violent crime rates were reported in cities of more than one million people and in all city groupings, except those with populations of 50,000 to 99,000 and 500,000 to one million.

It added that in the property crime category, burglary offenses dropped 9.8 percent, and larceny-theft offenses decreased 3.2 percent in the first six months of 2015. Only motor vehicle theft showed an increase of 1 percent.

As for the arson offenses, there was a 16.4-percent decrease in non-metropolitan counties and a 4.7-percent decrease in metropolitan counties.

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