Crime Went Down In Moylan’s First Year Back As AG

Crime in Guam went down the year Douglas Moylan returned to the Office of the Attorney General of Guam. Whether the drop in violent crimes can be attributed to Mr. Moylan’s maverick style meant to deter crime, or a combination of other factors, is not weighed in the 2023 Uniform Crime Report, which shows the reduction in crime.

Mr. Moylan ran for and was elected attorney general in November 2022. According to the report violent crime was at a three-year high that year, with 4.7 violent crimes per 1,000 people recorded. It was a more than 20 percent increase from the previous year, and includes 802 reports of murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Murders from 2022 to 2023 went down by nearly half. Reported robberies went down from 131 to 109.

Mr. Moylan has insisted that the totality of his efforts – from his strong public statements condemning crime and encouraging lawful gun ownership to aggressive detention and sentencing advocacy and even to the monthly billboards his office has erected – are necessary to deter crime. The data that coincides with his return to office thus far seems to support his theory, though the report cautions readers that causation can be attributed to a number of factors and cannot easily be measured.

According to the comparative data in the report, the violent crime rate was at its highest in the five years compared in 2019, when there were 5 violent crimes per 1,000 people recorded. That year, reported forcible rapes were at the lowest among the five years, but robberies and aggravated assaults were greatest, with 139 and 527 reports recorded, respectively.

Aggravated assaults dropped to 354 in 2023, a five-year low; though reported forcible rapes in 2023 tied with 2022 as being the highest recorded number in five years at 268 reports.

The 2023 data also shows that police had a 100 percent arrest rate for reported murders, and relatively high rates of arrest for robberies and aggravated assaults, 81.7% and 72.9%, respectively.

Of the seven murders in 2023, police arrested seven Chamorros as the alleged murderers. None of the victims were Chamorro, according to the report.

Of the 268 rapes in 2023, 123 involved incest.

Interestingly, robberies in 2023 climaxed in February that year, with 18 recorded in February followed by a significant drop in the months following. That timeline coincides with the erection of the attorney general’s first monthly billboards and his first reports of criminal defendant recidivism while on pre-trial release.

Property Crime Rate Is Up

While the violent crime rate is down, property crime rate increased dramatically, nearing the 2019 levels. Property crimes, according to the report, includes burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.

Burglaries in 2023 were up from 2022, but dramatically lowered from the 2019 levels. Motor vehicle thefts also are down from 2019 levels. It is the larceny-theft category that largely pushed the property crime rate to close-to-2019 levels. In 2019, there were 1,779 reported larceny-theft cases. That number climbed to a five-year high of 2,590 in 2022 before dropping slightly to 2,520 in 2023. (Larceny-theft, according to the report, includes pocket picking, purse snatching, shoplifting, theft from building, theft from coin operated machine or device, theft from motor vehicle (except theft of motor vehicle parts or accessories, theft of motor vehicle parts or accessories, and “all other larceny”)

The report shows a trend of crime reduction from the month Mr. Moylan took office and through the remainder of that first year. Except for 2020, where more larceny-thefts were recorded in the three months prior to the declaration of public health emergency and the lockdowns, from 2019 to 2022, monthly larceny-theft reports were relatively the same from month to month. In 2023, however, the reported crimes peaked in January then dropped dramatically.

Similar to the robberies and larceny-theft data for 2023, burglaries that year peaked in January at 110 reported burglaries – the first month of Mr. Moylan’s term – before nosediving, except for the 104 burglaries reported in both March and June.

Notably among the burglary data set, home invasions are at a five-year low, with 100 in 2019, 105 in 2020, 89 in 2021, 83 in 2022, and 54 in 2023.

The 2023 Uniform Crime Report is undated, however, it appears to have been recently published. According to the report, prepared by the Guam Police Department division of research, planning, and evaluation, in 2023 only 34 full-time law enforcement officers worked at the Northern Precinct in Dededo, which covers an estimated population of 69,480 people. The Tumon Precinct, which covers less than a third of that population, had 42 assigned officers that year. The Hagatna and Hagat precincts each had 32 full-time officers that year.