Shooting Of 7-Year-Old Girl Highlights High Point's Growing Violence Problem
High Point Police Say A 7-Year-Old Girl Was Shot On Her Own Front Porch On Monday Evening.
HIGH POINT, N.C. — A 7-year-old girl was shot twice in High Point while playing on the front porch of a home Monday night.
Police say they found the girl with two gunshot wounds to her left leg around 9:30. High Point officers responded to the call on the 800 block of East Russell Avenue.
This is just the latest shooting in a string of violence that has seemed to plague the High Point area recently.
We all feel like crime in High Point has been getting worse, but do the numbers back that up?
High Point Crime By the Numbers A Numeric View
WFMY News 2 did a deep dive into FBI Crime statistics going all the way back to 2013. 2017 numbers are the most recent accurate numbers available.
Including 2013, in the five years of 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 those FBI crime statistics show a steady rise in both violent crimes, and murders in High Point.
In 2013 the FBI shows there were 556 violent crimes. In 2016, that number jumped all the way up to 721. The number for 2017 wasn't available.
As for murders, in 2013 High Point has just two. In 2017 they had 20. To be fair, that seems to be higher than the trend they were experiencing up to that point, because in 2016 and 2015 they had 7 and 8 murders respectively.
One point that has been brought up though is what about the population? If the population goes up, you would expect crime to go up as well. We looked at that too.
In 2013 there were 107,261 people living in High Point according to those FBI statistics. In 2016 that number rose to 111,435 people. An increase of almost 4 percent.
The violent crimes though, rose by nearly 30 percent in that same time span.
While these numbers have been on the rise, have they also been on the rise in similar populations across the country?
High Point's Crime Rate vs Simiar Sized Cities Crime Rates Don't Always Tell Whole Story
One city close to the same population is Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 2013 they had just over 105,000 people and the population has stayed about the same over the past several years.
In 2013 Green Bay, Wisconsin had 500 violent crimes, and High Point has 556. The murders in 2013 were also exactly the same: Two.
If you look at the trend though, Green Bay in 2016 had 505 violent crimes and High Point had 721.
However, in 2014 High Point had 4 thousand more people than Green Bay but actually had less violent crimes.
The hard part to swallow is this last statistic though. Keep in mind, both numbers seem to be a little bit against the grain, but look at this.
In 2017 High Point had 20 Murders. Green Bay in 2017, has Zero.