s Q2 2025 Crime Trends | CAP Index

Q2 2025 Crime Trends

Aug 9, 2025

Key Trends and Takeaways

In the latest installment of CAP Index’s Insights from the Research and Innovation Team, Emily Blackburn, Director of Geospatial Crime Solutions, walked through notable crime trends revealed by CAP Index’s proprietary Location, Date, and Time Dashboard for Q2 2025.

National Crime Trends Holding Steady

According to Blackburn, crime levels in 2025 remain consistently lower than 2024, continuing a trend that began in Q3 2024. While Q2 showed a seasonal uptick compared to Q1 — as expected during warmer months — the year-to-date crime rate is down approximately 11% compared to the same period last year.

This broader reduction in crime is consistent with national reporting trends and reinforces the reliability of CAP Index’s dashboard and data methodology.

Crime Type Changes: What’s Up, What’s Down

While most crime categories saw decreases, several specific types of crime experienced notable increases in Q2:

  • Simple Assaults:
    ⬆ ~30% increase — a statistically significant rise, especially relevant for retailers and commercial spaces.

  • Motor Vehicle Parts/Accessories Theft:
    ⬆ Driven by demand for items like catalytic converters, likely linked to fluctuating metal prices.

  • Arson:
    ⬆ From 800 to 1,200 incidents – a significant relative increase, though still low in absolute numbers.

  • Coin-Operated Machine Thefts:
    ⬆ From 90 to 107 cases — not statistically significant, but worth monitoring.

Location Type Spotlight: Grocery Stores

Blackburn provided a focused analysis of crime at grocery and supermarket locations, a key sector for many CAP Index clients. Notable findings included:

  • Simple Assaults at Grocery Stores:
    ⬆ From 745 to 862 incidents — a statistically significant increase (~110 additional cases), highlighting growing interpersonal conflict at these locations.

  • Shoplifting:
    ⬆ Increased by 8%, from 3,795 to 4,100 incidents in the first half of 2025.
    This was identified as the most statistically significant driver of increased crime in grocery settings.
    Notably, shoplifting was up in three of the last four quarters, confirming an ongoing trend.

  • Murders at Grocery Stores:
    ⬆ From 2 to 4 cases — although not statistically significant, the presence of homicide remains a serious concern.

  • Purse Snatching & Pocket Picking:
    ⬆ Slight increases in Q2, but overall numbers remained low and did not register as statistically significant.

Sector-Specific Insights and Client Engagement

Blackburn emphasized the importance of drilling down into industry-specific crime trends to help clients understand what’s truly affecting their business operations. While many assume shoplifting is the primary issue, CAP Index’s data allows for evidence-based confirmation, showing that in the case of grocery retailers, this assumption is indeed backed by the data.

Conclusion

CAP Index’s Q2 2025 analysis highlights continued national crime reduction, while drawing attention to specific location- and crime-type exceptions — especially within retail environments. The insights from the dashboard allow businesses to prioritize security planning and resource allocation based on the most relevant and current risk data.

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Podcast Transcript:

Welcome to Insights from the CAPS Research and Innovation team, where we break down crime trends, risk analysis, and the data-driven solutions shaping security today. Join our experts as they share their knowledge, explore real-world applications, and dive into the science behind crime forecasting. Let’s get started.
Hi, this is Emily Blackburn, the Director of Geospatial Crime Solutions at CAP Index. Today, I’m here with our Q2 2025 review of the Location, Date, and Time Dashboard in Power BI. I’ll walk through a few highlights we’re seeing this quarter in the cities we track. If you’d like more background on why we selected these cities or how the dashboard is designed, please go back to the first video in this series, where I cover that in depth. For now, let’s jump straight into the new data.
Looking at the dashboard, we can see that overall crime for 2025 remains below last year’s levels. While Q2 ticked up slightly—as it usually does in the spring and summer months—it’s still well below 2024. Year-to-date, crime is down about 11%. We started seeing this downward trend in Q3 of last year, and now we’ve had a full year of declines. That’s consistent with what we’re hearing nationwide, which gives us confidence that the dashboard is accurately reflecting broader trends.
Next, let’s look at changes by crime type. Comparing Q1 and Q2 of 2025 with the same quarters in 2024, a few categories stand out.
  • Arson is up slightly, from about 800 to 1,200 incidents, but the numbers are still relatively small.
  • Simple assault is up about 30%, which is notable and something our customers pay close attention to.
  • Motor vehicle parts and accessories thefts—often catalytic converters—are also up, which tends to fluctuate with metal prices.
  • Coin-operated machines show a minor increase, but the absolute numbers are too small to be statistically significant.
So, while overall crime is down, some categories are bucking the trend, which is important for businesses to understand.
The last piece we’ll look at is location type. Here, we can see some shifts in industrial areas, which may reflect better reporting by agencies. But what caught our attention this quarter is grocery stores and supermarkets.
  • Previously, grocery-related crimes were down slightly or flat. In Q2, however, we saw an uptick. Narrowing the dashboard to just grocery stores, the data shows:
  • Murders doubled from two to four incidents. While that sounds dramatic, it’s too small to be statistically significant.
  • Simple assaults rose from 745 to 862—about 110 more cases. That increase is statistically significant and points to more interpersonal violence in grocery settings.
  • Purse snatching and pickpocketing were up slightly this quarter but are down overall compared to previous quarters.
Shoplifting is the key driver. It increased significantly in Q2, and when we look back over the past year, shoplifting has been up in three of the last four quarters. Even though the rise from about 3,795 to 4,100 incidents represents an 8% increase, it’s statistically significant and meaningful for our customers.
So, while it’s clear to retailers that shoplifting is a problem, this data allows us to confirm the scope, track the trend, and quantify its impact. That’s the level of detail we bring when talking with customers: not just that crime is down overall, but specifically what’s happening in their industry and why.
That’s a snapshot of Q2 2025. If you’d like us to dive deeper into a particular crime type, location, or trend—or if you’d like to learn more about what CAP Index does—please reach out.

 

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