AURORA | For the second consecutive year, Aurora’s crime statistics have some at City Hall scratching their heads: Crime is up, arrests are down.

The uptick in crime — which includes a 17-percent jump in violent crime from 2015 to 2016 and a 7-percent spike in property crime  according to a recently released department report — mirrors national trends, which show crime rates rising, particularly in big cities.

Arrests, meanwhile, fell by 11 percent, and summonses saw an even steeper, 24-percent drop from 2015 to 2016.

Police say there are a multitude of reasons for the dip in arrests, including officers spending more time on complex investigations and less time patrolling the streets, as well as officers focusing more on community outreach than racking up arrests.

The bigger picture of crime in Aurora is  complicated.

After consecutive years that saw crime climb and arrests drop in Aurora, the city has less crime than it did a decade ago. That’s despite the city growing by about 50,000 people.

In 2006, when about 306,000 people called Aurora home, there were 14,872 major crimes. Last year, when the Census Bureau said Aurora had close to 360,000 residents, there were 13,281 major crimes. It means that the rate of crime has fallen since then.

“We’re still the safest large city in Colorado, and that’s a good benchmark for us,” said Aurora police Chief Nick Metz, referring to data that shows, on a per-capita basis, that Aurora has less crime than Denver and Colorado Springs. Police officials said when per-capita data comes out later this year, their projections show Aurora will hold onto that title.

The city has long-struggled with a reputation as something of a crime-riddled suburb, though the numbers rarely supported that assumption. Metz hasn’t been shy about confronting that reputation, something past city leaders have been reluctant to mention.

“Aurora has for a long time had to suffer through some pretty unfair characterizations as far as it being a community that has high crime,” he said. “I think people nowadays are beginning to see Aurora as a much different city (than) 10 years ago.”

Metz pointed out that while crime is up year-over-year in Aurora, that’s the case in other large cities, too.

There could be myriad reasons for the uptick, he said, including people being more willing to report crimes than they may have been a few years ago.

When he took over the department in 2015, after two decades with Seattle police, Metz said he regularly came across people who said they had been a crime victim, or knew of a crime, but opted not to report it. Often, he said, they chose not to report it because they didn’t want to bother the police, or because they figured the crime wouldn’t be solved anyway.

“We’ve been really consistently telling people that we need to know this information,” he said. “Maybe we won’t be able to solve the crime, but we need to know.”

Still, crime rising while arrests fall is troubling, especially because it has happened in consecutive years, said Aurora City Councilwoman Francoise Bergan.

“If it was a one-year situation, I guess maybe I wouldn’t be so concerned,” said Bergan, who chairs council’s Public Safety Committee. “But it seems to be a trend.”

At last week’s committee meeting, where police presented the new numbers, Bergan asked the department for more data about how many officers are on the street at a given time. Bergan said she wants to know not just the total number of officers, but how many of those are on patrol at a given time.

It could be, Bergan said, that the city simply needs more police.

“We’re hopefully going to be hiring more officers,” she said. “I just want to make sure that we are using our resources effectively.”

Deputy Chief Vanessa Wilson said several factors contribute to the dip in arrests. Beyond the community outreach efforts, she said officers last year were regularly assigned to guard presidential candidates when they visited the region.

Officers are also more cautious, she said. That could mean two officers going to a call, which means that second officer isn’t available for a different call.

“I think that is a factor,” she said. “It’s a time when officer safety is paramount, and people have to take their safety into consideration.”

Sgt. Bob Wesner, president of the Aurora Police Association, said he doesn’t think officers are being less aggressive because of the current climate. But officers today are more focused on solving problems without making arrests, he said, and that’s true of the entire profession.

He said he hopes the city adds more cops on the street. If people see more police, he said, they are less likely to commit crimes.

“What the people of the city Aurora want is to see their officers out on the street, interacting with them,” he said.

By the numbers

2005

Major crimes: 16,776

Violent crimes: 1,851

Property crimes: 14,925

2006

Major crimes: 14,872

Violent crimes: 1,862

Property crimes: 13,010

2015

Major crimes: 12,230

Violent crimes: 1,690

Property crimes: 10,540

2016

Major crimes: 13,281

Violent crimes: 1,981

Property crimes: 11,300