What's The Most Common Violent Crime In Hatboro And Horsham?

Editor’s note: a previous version of this story appeared in the Hatboro-Horsham Patch of September 29, 2015.

Good news for Hatboro and Horsham area residents: on the whole, violent crime has continued to decrease in the area over the past three years.

That’s according to the FBI’s annual ”Crime in the United States” report for 2014, released on Monday.

There were 8 violent crimes in Hatboro and 18 in Horsham in 2014. That’s compared to 2 in Hatboro and 25 in Horsham in 2013, and 5 and 21, respectively, in 2012.

Violent crime includes offenses involving force of the threat of force: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, according to the FBI.

More good news: there were no murders and very few incidents of rape in 2014, and only a handful of robberies. In fact, aggravated assault counted for most of the reported violent crimes.

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Property crimes, meanwhile, saw a measurable increase in 2014, up from 72 to 88 in Hatboro and from 206 to 212 in Horsham. from 284. However, both years were an improvement on 2012 for Horsham, when there were 281 property crimes across the township.

Overall, however, Hatboro and Horsham are in line with the United States, where the FBI reports violent crime decreased as a whole. Nationally, violent crime decreased by 0.2 percent from 2013, according to the report.

The FBI warns media outlets and other organizations against using the statistics for ranking purposes, claiming that there are too many factors involved - such as population flux and urbanization rate - to accurately compare cities based on the numbers.