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Safety Watch: Type I Crime Down 2%, Homicides Up 4% Through July

Published Sep 8, 2026 · 787 Daily · Original analysis

The Puerto Rico Police Bureau’s Type I statistics now cover January 1 – July 31, 2026. Reported Type I crime through July 2026: 11,444 incidents, down 1.9% from 11,668 in the same months of 2025.

Police-reported Type I crime totaled 11,444 incidents from January through July 2026, down 1.9% from 11,668 a year earlier, and violent crime overall fell by the same 1.9%, to 3,623 cases. The decline was concentrated in a handful of categories: vehicle thefts dropped 16.6%, rapes fell 15.1%, and robberies were down 5.4%. Burglaries ticked up slightly, 0.6%, while larcenies and aggravated assaults were nearly flat, down 0.3% each. The outlier is homicides, which rose 3.9% to 269, with May the deadliest month at 50. It’s worth noting these are police-reported incidents, not survey-based victimization data, so they reflect what was filed with PRPD rather than a full accounting of crime experienced.

Among the largest municipios, San Juan recorded the most incidents, 2,516, and also the highest rate per 10,000 residents at 74.8. Bayamón and Carolina had similar raw totals, 1,044 and 869 respectively, but nearly identical per-resident rates, 57.2 and 57.1, suggesting comparable exposure despite the gap in overall counts. Caguas and Ponce reported fewer incidents and lower rates, 41.6 and 27.8 per 10,000. The pattern suggests that while raw totals are driven by population size, the underlying incident rates in San Juan, Bayamón and Carolina are closer together than the headline numbers alone would imply.

The categories

Source: Puerto Rico Police Bureau, SAEC Type I crime reports (División de Estadísticas de la Criminalidad), published by the Instituto de Estadísticas de Puerto Rico, data as of 2026-09-07.
Category2026 YTD2025 same monthsChange
All Type I crime11,44411,668down 1.9%
Homicides269259up 3.9%
Rapes230271down 15.1%
Robberies558590down 5.4%
Aggravated assaults2,5662,575down 0.3%
Burglaries1,4291,421up 0.6%
Larcenies5,6715,690down 0.3%
Vehicle thefts719862down 16.6%

Where the incidents are

Source: Puerto Rico Police Bureau, SAEC Type I crime reports (División de Estadísticas de la Criminalidad), published by the Instituto de Estadísticas de Puerto Rico, data as of 2026-09-07; population from the U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-year estimates.
MunicipioType I incidents (YTD)HomicidesPer 10,000 residents
San Juan2,5164574.8
Bayamón1,0441657.2
Carolina869757.1
Caguas522741.6
Ponce3691927.8

Per-resident rates use the Census ACS 5-year population estimate for each municipio; raw counts favour the largest towns, rates do not. Every municipio’s numbers, with the same lenses, are on the safety hub, and each town’s rate appears on its living page.

This is the 2nd Safety Watch (the previous one is here). Source: Puerto Rico Police Bureau, SAEC Type I crime reports (División de Estadísticas de la Criminalidad), published by the Instituto de Estadísticas de Puerto Rico (https://www.estadisticas.pr.gov/en-us/productos/delitos-tipo-i), data as of 2026-09-07. These are reported incidents compiled by the police bureau — not victimisation surveys; reporting rates vary by crime type and town.