This Texas City's 2016 Murder-Rate Increase Bested Chicago's

HOUSTON, TX — We've all heard by now that Chicago experienced an awful 2016 where murders are concerned. The city recorded a 59 percent increase last year, and 750 murders were committed there, the most of any city in the nation.

By comparison, Houston logged a mere 302 murders in 2016, less than one per day, and one less than the number documented for 2015 in the Bayou City.

In San Antonio, it's a different picture altogether. The Texas city famous for The Alamo outpaced even Chicago last year in the murder-rate increase category, finishing 2016 by logging a whopping 61 percent jump over 2015's murder rate. There were 151 murders in San Antonio in 2016 — by August of that year, the numbers of murders there had already surpassed their 2015 total.

“What we’re seeing now is a lot of spontaneous murders,” San Antonio Police Department Chief William McManus told the San Antonio Express-News then. “It’s really difficult to put a reason on it.”

Some criminologists say the increase could be linked to San Antonio's significant population growth over the past few years and certain "social characteristics," such as San Antonio's high rate of economic segregation.

The murder-rate numbers, compiled by FiveThirtyEight.com and based on data from police departments around the nation, put St. Louis at the top of the heap for murders per 100,000 people. Last year, the city on the Mississippi River had 59.3 murders per 100,000 citizens, uncomfortably ahead of Baltimore (51.2), Detroit (44.9), New Orleans (44.5), and Cleveland (35.0).

Though murder rates nationwide are low based on historical standards, 2015's increase was the largest in a quarter century, according to the FBI — there were an estimated 15,696 murders in the U.S. in 2015, 1,532 more than 2014's numbers and the most recorded in a calendar year since 2008.

According to police data, big cities saw an 11.3 percent increase in murders in 2016, down from the 14.8 percent rise from 2014 to 2015.

While the increase in San Antonio's numbers was surprising, no Texas city was among the top 10 on the list of cities with the highest murder rates.

— Image courtesy United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Homicide Report 2013