WASHINGTON — Every 17 seconds last year, on average, a violent crime was committed somewhere in America. They include a forcible rape every five minutes, a murder every 23 minutes, an aggravated assault every 28 seconds and a robbery every 51 seconds.
While this "crime clock" of violations reported to the police and chronicled by the FBI's uniform crime reports does not mean that the offenses actually took place with that precise regularity, it illustrates the relative frequency of violent crime across the country.
The sense of violation is compounded by the frequent incidence of nonviolent property crimes, which are logged at an average of one every three seconds. A larceny or theft occurs every four seconds, a burglary every 12 seconds and a motor vehicle theft every 20 seconds, the FBI calculates.
Still, there is a silver lining in the FBI's annual report on crime in the United States, which was released Saturday. The rate of violent crime declined 4% from 1993's level, part of a 2% dip in the total number of serious crimes reported to police.
In the nine U.S. cities with populations exceeding 1 million, the rate of violent crime dropped 8%, the bureau reported. These include Los Angeles, where violent crime fell 13%, and San Diego, where it declined 7%, according to a Justice Department analysis of the FBI data.
FBI Director Louis J. Freeh cautioned that the reductions are "modest" and said he is not surprised that fear of violent crime still appears to be rising.
"We're talking about a crime rate that reflects 23,000 murders a year," Freeh said in an interview.
While it is significant that the murder total declined slightly from the 24,000 logged the previous year, the 1994 total is still "a very alarming figure," Freeh said.
"Because we see violent crime committed everywhere in the country and particularly by an increasingly growing and violent juvenile population, I think there are great fears," he said. "The structures that have been in place for many years to guarantee safe communities and families are not present anymore. In fact, they're deteriorating."
He cited an ominous increase in the rate of juvenile crime and significant expansion of the crime-prone age group over the next 10 years as cause for concern about crime trends. "I don't think we should take a lot of comfort in the statistics," he said.
