DENVER (KDVR) — It isn’t only Colorado’s big cities that have seen violent crime rise in the last two years.
A young Longmont teenager was killed in a drive-by shooting on Saturday. Officers received a call about a drive-by shooting near a basketball court. Later evidence emerged that suggested the shooting was gang-related.
Although rates are lower than those of Denver or Aurora, Longmont and other smaller cities along the northern Front Range haven’t escaped the uptick in violent crime that has closed on Colorado in the last several years.
Violent crime in Longmont has been rising since 2015, peaking last year.
There were 298 murders, aggravated assaults, robberies and non-consensual sexual assaults in Longmont in 2015. That had nearly doubled to 554 in 2021.
A similar trend is at play in Loveland and Greeley.
Loveland’s annual violent crime totaled 197 in 2015 and had risen to 291 by 2021. Greeley’s crime had been on the downswing since 2015 but spiked in 2020 and 2021, when there were 664 violent crimes.
Aggravated assaults, which involve a weapon or serious injury, are the violent crimes that have risen.
Longmont’s aggravated assaults more than doubled from 2015 to 2021.
Loveland’s aggravated assaults nearly doubled, from 96 to 159. Greeley’s increased by more than 100, from 323 to 444.