Montgomery County robberies down 41% this year as vehicle thefts climb, county data show

By Everett Calloway

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Robberies reported in Montgomery County have fallen 41% this year, and burglaries are down 28%, according to an Inquisitor analysis of the county’s public crime database. The same records show motor vehicle thefts rising for the first time in two years, and a single offense code jumping more than eighteenfold because of reports logged at one county address.

The analysis covers offenses with a start date between Jan. 1 and Oct. 22 in each year from 2022 through 2026, drawn from the “Crime” dataset on dataMontgomery, the county’s open-data portal. The dataset holds reports from the Montgomery County Department of Police and the county’s municipal and other agencies. It counts offenses, not people, and a single incident can produce more than one offense record.

Over the period, the database lists 36,733 offenses this year, down 5% from 38,700 over the same weeks of 2025. Distinct incidents fell by a similar margin, from 36,134 to 34,428.

That matches what the department has said publicly. “I can tell you that crime overall is still trending down in 2026 compared to 2025,” Michelle Iezzi, deputy director of the department’s Operational Intelligence Division, told Bethesda Today in August.

Where the declines are

The steepest drops are in crimes where someone takes property by force or by breaking in. The database records 270 robberies through Oct. 22, compared with 458 a year earlier and 523 in 2023. Burglaries fell to 767 from 1,063. Measured against 2023, the high point for robbery in this five-year window, this year’s count is down 48%.

Within robbery, the decline is sharpest in cases involving guns. Records coded as gun robberies, whether street, business, residential or unspecified, fell to 53 from 123, a 57% drop. Strong-arm robberies on the street, at businesses and in homes fell 29%, from 187 to 133. Knife robberies fell to 36 from 55.

Carjackings are a small share of the total. The database lists 17 so far this year, 13 armed and four strong-arm, compared with 30 at this point in 2025. “The vehicles are being targeted, not the people,” Iezzi told Bethesda Today.

Homicides recorded under the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter code fell to 12 from 19. Forcible rape reports fell 16%. Aggravated assaults rose slightly, to 623 from 604. Simple assaults were essentially flat.

Property crimes overall fell 13%, from 19,662 to 17,086. Shoplifting dropped 24% and thefts from vehicles 19%, after both had risen through 2024.

Auto theft reverses

Motor vehicle theft is the main exception. The database lists 2,149 vehicle thefts through Oct. 22, up 13% from 1,901 at this point last year, though still below the 2,719 recorded over the same weeks of 2023. Thefts of vehicle parts and accessories rose 20%.

The department’s 2025 annual report showed auto thefts falling 22% from 2024, after a 2023 peak of 3,366 for the full year, Bethesda Today reported. Iezzi told the publication that Hyundai and Kia models make up 43% of vehicles stolen or targeted in the county. Capt. Cody Fields, a police spokesperson, said thieves may be using a device that clones key fobs.

The increase is uneven across the county’s police districts. In the Sixth District, which covers Montgomery Village and parts of Gaithersburg, recorded vehicle thefts rose to 421 from 265. They also climbed in the Rockville and Germantown districts, while Bethesda and Takoma Park saw small declines.

Silver Spring, the county’s busiest district, accounts for much of the robbery decline. Robbery reports there fell by about half, from 151 to 73, and burglaries by 41%. In March the department credited “proactive policing strategies” and partnerships with businesses for falling crime in the Third District. “Public safety is a shared effort,” Police Chief Marc Yamada said in that release.

Rockville is the only district where recorded robberies rose, from 27 to 31.

One code, one address

The largest percentage change in the database has nothing to do with street crime. Offenses coded “Pornography/Obscene Material” have totaled between 35 and 74 a year over this period since 2022. This year the database lists 639.

Almost all of the increase traces to one place. Of this year’s 639 records, 613 list the 7300 block of Calhoun Place in Derwood, inside the department’s Rockville district. That block houses several county and state offices, including the police department’s Missing Children Unit. The same block appears in 232 records of all types in 2025.

The entries peaked early in the year, with 94 in January, 122 in February and 109 in March, then fell to 12 in September. The pattern suggests a change in how or where certain reports were recorded rather than a surge in incidents at that address. The department has not explained the increase publicly, and The Inquisitor has asked it to do so.

The cluster matters for district comparisons. Rockville district’s total rose to 5,969 offenses from 5,205, a 15% increase, the only district to show a gain. Without the obscene-material records, the increase is about 3%. Without them countywide, the drop in total offenses is closer to 7% than 5%.

What the numbers can and cannot show

The open-data figures are not official crime statistics. The portal is updated continuously, records can be reclassified or removed as cases develop, and the most recent weeks are the most likely to change. The department’s annual report, which uses its own methods, is the official count.

The Inquisitor grouped records by offense start date. Counts by report date may differ slightly. The “district” field reflects the police district where an offense was recorded, and a few records carry no district. Changes in small categories, such as homicide or carjacking, can swing widely from year to year and should be read with caution.

Even with those limits, the direction is consistent across the categories that most shape residents’ sense of safety. Robberies, burglaries, shoplifting and thefts from cars are at or near their lowest levels for this period in the five years the dataset covers. Auto theft, which the department has spent the year trying to curb with steering wheel locks and outreach, is the clear exception.

The Inquisitor is seeking comment from the Montgomery County Department of Police, the office of County Executive Marc Elrich, the County Council’s Public Safety Committee, the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Rockville City Police Department. The Inquisitor’s queries include the obscene-material records and the vehicle-theft increase in the Sixth District.

Methodology: Figures were retrieved Oct. 23–25, 2026, from the dataMontgomery Crime dataset (icn6-v9z3) by querying offense counts grouped by NIBRS category (“crimename2”), police district and year for offenses with start dates between Jan. 1 and Oct. 22. Robbery subtypes come from the dataset’s “crimename3” field.