Crime stats hold steady
Homicides in Brownsville fell in 2011, from seven in 2010 to just two this past year, according to the police department’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) records.
Other major crimes — rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft — remained relatively steady from 2010 to 2011, although the city saw an uptick in reported rapes and a downturn in reported property crimes, the crime statistics show.
Interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez said the department will release a detailed annual report on the crime statistics early this week, and declined to comment on the numbers until then.
The city participates in the FBI’s national UCR program in submitting the city’s crime statistics each year.
The low homicide number in Brownsville is consistent with past years — as the city’s number of reported slayings has not risen to double digits in the past decade.
The highest homicide number in the past 10 years was reported in 2003, when city experienced nine slayings.
The first of the city’s two homicides occurred early in the year, in February.
A University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College student was stabbed to death after he allegedly broke into an apartment complex shared by three women. The boyfriend of one of the women stabbed 21-year-old Santiago Bernal in self-defense, authorities ruled.
The second occurred early in September. A Brownsville teenager was shot to death, reportedly over a fight over a cell phone. Police charged two teenagers, Roberto Ortega and Eric Hernandez, in the murder of Jose Francisco Araujo, 17.
Ortega pleaded guilty in November and is serving a 40-year sentence.
In 2011, the department handled 37 reported forcible rapes, a crime the FBI has defined as forced vaginal intercourse.
The number is up from 31 reports of rape in 2010.
The FBI broadened the definition of forcible rape in compiling its UCR reports at the end of 2011 to include forced penetration of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, as well as forced oral sex — notably including men as potential victims — but the more inclusive definition does not affect this year’s reports.
Property crimes make up the bulk of the department’s reports each year. People reported more than 7,000 thefts and about 1,000 burglaries in 2011.
Those numbers fell by several hundred reported in 2010.
The department also handled 353 reports of aggravated assault, down from 360 in 2010.
