(The Center Square) — The Shreveport Police Department delivered its monthly crime statistics to the city council, which showed that most crime continues to trend downwards compared to this time last year and during the past five years.
In recent reports, homicides in Shreveport had dropped by 44% compared to the previous year. Since May, the department reported one additional homicide for 2025, totaling 16 so far this year— a 50% decrease from last year’s 32 reported homicides.
As the gap grows larger in reported homicides, one crime category is still trending up. However, Police Chief Wayne Smith gave a potential reason for the increase.
“One category that consistently is concerning is the sex crime,” said Smith. “As I’ve done more research, a lot of factors could be in that. We know sex crimes, this is one of those categories where sometimes crime goes unreported. We feel that possibly more is being reported to us than has been in the past.”
Reported sex crimes throughout the city have been on the rise this year with an 11% increase so far this year compared to last year, and a 6% increase last month.
“I really do believe that more crimes are being reported as opposed to more being committed,” said Smith.
Despite the increase in sex crimes, all other reported crimes are decreasing. Year-to-date shots fired calls reported 1,021 this year, a decrease of 425 from last year. Most notably, this is 1,591 calls fewer than the department had in 2021 at this point in the year.
Year-to-date shootings that injured someone totaled 249 in 2021, 147 in 2024 and 105 for this year so far.
Additional reported crimes showed 574 vehicle thefts, 23 armed robberies, 672 burglaries, 499 vehicle burglaries and 57 instances of panhandling.
Smith said there are around 2,106 cameras in Shreveport tied to the Real Time Crime Center with 18 more on the way. Of those, 1,858 are residential linked cameras.
Smith said Shreveport residents can contact him or the police department to have their exterior home cameras linked to the Real Time Crime Center.
