The city of Lubbock is growing. Unfortunately last year, violent crime grew as well.
That bucked the trend of crime going down in some of the Lone Start State's major cities.
LPD lieutenant, Ray Mendoza said you should not be alarmed.
"Crime went up, it was a record setting year for us," Mendoza said. "We had 17 (homicides) but what people don't really look at is what type of homicides are occurring. The overwhelming majority of the homicides we had, the victim and the offender knew each other. In other words, they were either in a domestic situation or they were involved in some type of relationship where they were friends. And then the other aspect that we look at is, how much of that were they involved in high risk behavior."
He said unless you are involved in things like drugs or burglary, you really do not have to worry.
"There's very few stranger on stranger crimes or homicides," he said. "In fact, of the 17 that we had, only one of them, and even that one, we haven't solved yet so we don't know if there was any type of relationship there."
LPD is not just standing by the way-side though. Mendoza said they are working to make sure the numbers do not continue to grow.
"Anytime you have a spurt in growth, you're going to have the same thing that happens in other major cities, crime increases. So we're trying to get out in front of it, hire more officers, and be more proactive about going out into the community and educating the public on how to protect our themselves."
The lieutenant said crime is not just a police problem, but a community problem.
"So we try to work with our citizens, try to educate them on how to protect themselves, how to be better aware of their surroundings, and so hopefully in that way we can actually prevent these crimes from occurring."
Mendoza said even though last year set the record for homicides, comparatively, the numbers are down from last year.
