AURORA | Aurora police statistics through nine months of 2012 show a jarring spike in crime driven largely by the July 20 theater shootings.
According to the data, murder is up 136 percent compared to the same stretch last year, with 26 slayings this year compared to 11 last year.
Almost half of those murders, though, happened in one incident: the July 20 rampage at the Century Aurora 16 theater, which left 12 dead and more than 50 others wounded.
Last year, Aurora had an unusually-low 12 murders in the entire year, almost a 50-percent drop from the 23 murders in 2010. By the midway point this year, the city already had nine murders, putting it on pace to see more murders than the previous year.
The theater shootings also caused a major spike in the number of people who fell victim to aggravated assaults. That data point climbed 11 percent, from 582 during the same stretch last year to 647 this year. But because much of the rise is the product of a single incident, the number of aggravated assault incidents is actually fairly flat, with 481 compared to 478 last year.
In all, violent crime, which includes murder, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault, is up 5.4 percent compared to last year.
Still, other crimes that weren’t impacted by the theater case are also up.
According to the data, property crime, which includes burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft, was also up 4 percent.
Overall, major crime in Aurora was up almost 5 percent, with 89,901 incidents so far in 2012 compared to 8,490 during the same stretch in 2011.
Aurora’s crime has generally been down in recent years and spikes like those police have seen in 2012 have been rare. Since 2005, all major crime down 30. In 2010, crime inched up slightly for the first time in nearly a decade with a 0.6 percent increase.
But last year, crime was again down, this time 2.8 percent.
According to the city’s numbers through the end of September:
• Sex assaults were up 3 percent, from 139 to 143.
• Robberies were down 6 percent, from 384 to 360.
• Burglary was down 14 percent, from 1,605 to 1,367.
• Larceny was up 10 percent from 5,101 to 5,634.
• Motor vehicle theft was up 8 percent from 668 to 724.
Aurora’s spike in violent crime seems to mirror a trend nationally.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported last week that violent crimes unexpectedly jumped 18 percent last year, the first rise in nearly 20 years, and property crimes rose for first time in a decade. But academic experts said the new government data fall short of signaling a reversal of the long decline in crime.
The stats said the increase in the number of violent crimes was the result of an upward swing in simple assaults, which rose 22 percent, from 4 million in 2010 to 5 million last year. The incidence of rape, sexual assault and robbery remained largely unchanged, as did serious violent crime involving weapons or injury.
Property crimes were up 11 percent in 2011, from 15.4 million in 2010 to 17 million, according to the bureau’s annual national crime victimization survey. Household burglaries rose 14 percent, from 3.2 million to 3.6 million. The number of thefts jumped by 10 percent, from 11.6 million to 12.8 million.
The data is not broken by city or state.
The statistics bureau said the percentage increases last year were so large primarily because the 2011 crime totals were compared to historically low levels of crime in 2010. Violent crime has fallen by 65 percent since 1993, from 16.8 million to 5.8 million last year.
“2011 may be worse than 2010, but it was also the second-best in recent history,” said Northeastern University criminology professor James Alan Fox.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.