Crime rate in McAllen at its lowest in 38 years, but Valley sees ‘a lot of’ auto theft activity

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McALLEN — The city has been recognized as Texas’ third safest city in the state.

So said former McAllen Mayor Jim Darling at McAllen’s Annual Crime Report luncheon held at the city’s chamber of commerce late Wednesday morning.

McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez not only provided statistics using a PowerPoint presentation regarding the city’s crime but presented information about neighboring cities in the Rio Grande Valley as well as other metropolitan cities around Texas in order to compare and contrast their crime rates.

All in all, the crime rate in McAllen has dropped about 2.2% between 2023 and 2022, according to the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which McAllen has been utilizing for a couple years now at the behest of the FBI.

Before then, the McAllen Police Department had been utilizing the Uniform Crime Reporting program, which the department had been using for 36 years.

The end of last year marked what was a substantial record for McAllen police.

“At the end of 2023, we recorded our lowest crime in 38 years,” Rodriguez said. “McAllen has decreased … our crime volume [by] 77.8% from our highest crime ever reported by McAllen. That was 1995.”

In that year, McAllen had reported 12,591 crimes. By 2023, reported crimes consisted of only 22.2% of what 1995 saw.

The data the chief presented showed that all crime in McAllen has been on a steady decline since the 90s, adding that his data is similar to the crime rates in all of the United States.

Rodriguez then revealed a dedicated slide to auto thefts in the Rio Grande Valley.

“In the last six months or so, we have seen a lot of activity on the auto theft front,” Rodriguez said. “So, I put some slides together to kind of illustrate that for you as well to see what it’s been and what we’re trying to avoid [going] back to.”

In 2022, McAllen reported 63 auto thefts, Brownsville reported 189, Edinburg reported 86, Mission reported 117 and Pharr reported 111.

Rodriguez compared the number of stolen vehicles to cities further north than the RGV, such as Houston, San Antonio and Austin which had a stark contrast. While car theft reports in the Valley were in double or triple digits, the northern cities were in quadruple and quintuple digits as high as 17,344 which was reported by the Houston Police Department.

Audience members murmured amongst themselves when it was revealed that the San Antonio Police Department had reported 12,364 car thefts in 2022.

“That’s 35 cars a day stolen,” Rodriguez said. “Houston, 50 cars a day stolen.”

Rodriguez went on to say that Texas has a higher rate of car thefts than the nation. The rate of stolen cars in Texas is a little over 331 offenses per 100,000 population, based on data dating as far back as 1985.

In contrast, based on the same criteria, the U.S. as whole reports nearly 283 car thefts per 100,000 population.

Rodriguez concluded his report by stating that Texas is a border state and that factor could play a role in the number of car thefts reported.

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