Phoenixville Violent Crime: Increasing Or Decreasing?

Phoenixville’s violent crime rate hit a three-year high in 2014, but only by a tiny margin.

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

The total number of violent crimes in the borough was 44, up from 36 in 2014 and 43 in 2013. 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.

The good news: there were no murders or incidents of rape in 2014, and only a handful of robberies. In fact, aggravated assault counted for 41 of the 44 reported violent crimes.

Property crimes, meanwhile, saw a measurable increase in 2014, up to 384 from 284. However, both years were an improvement on 2012, when there were 435 property crimes across the borough.

Overall, Phoenixville is slightly bucking the trend compared to the rest of 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.

East Pikeland, neighboring Phoenixville, saw its minor violent crime rate remain steady. It reported 4 incidents in 2014, 3 in 2013, and 3 in 2012.

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.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles on crime stats from the FBI report.