Memorial Day Weekend Galveston Crime Statistics From Mark Diaz

Memorial Day Weekend Galveston Crime Statistics From Mark Diaz

Memorial Day Weekend Galveston Crime Statistics

It’s Tuesday, yesterday was Memorial Day. We had a lot of visitors here on the island, which led me to think about a blog that has been discussed, not only by me but by criminologists everywhere. With the theme being that crimes increase in summer. There are several reasons why. In hotter temperatures, people tend to become more irritable, alcohol, people drink more during summer parties, and the list goes on.

There are many factors if you look at the data nationwide. Something unique to Galveston, since we’re an island and a tourist destination, for us it’s also a matter of population increase. My video last weekend was about Jeep Weekend, which had huge numbers of arrests. For Galveston County, we had 397 total in one weekend, which is a very high number.

Memorial Day Weekend Arrests

This past weekend, from Friday to Monday (Monday being a holiday), we had 270 arrests. So the daily numbers were not huge. Friday, we had 64. Saturday, we had 81. Sunday, we had 77. Yesterday, we had 48. Now, just to give you an idea, the weekend before the Go Topless Jeep weekend was 5/12-5/14. Nothing significant about that weekend. For that three-day total, we only had 148 arrests.

So it’s becoming pretty clear that as we get huge amounts of tourists over holiday weekends, it leads to an increase in arrests. It’s for all the same reasons I suspect, alcohol, partying all day, spending too much time together, getting in fights, the normal stuff you would see during the summer. Our numbers are going to be bigger in the summer because we have so many tourists that come to the island during that time. It amounts to more arrests.

This weekend there was a motorcycle fatality. As I looked through these arrests, I found that there was not a whole lot of what I would call violent crimes. There were a lot of assault cases, a lot of alcohol cases, driving while intoxicated, and there were some things that you see every weekend. However, I didn’t see a lot that stood out. There were a few people arrested for racing. There was an aggravated robbery, depending upon the circumstances that may or may not have had anything to do with tourism. There were a whole lot of arrests for public intoxication. Just the minor things we see here on holiday weekends due to the influx of people coming into town and drinking.

Again, not a whole lot of serious violent crime this weekend. There were a couple of drug arrests, plenty of DWI cases, criminal mischief, accidents involving injury, and criminal trespassing, and we did have an arrest for murder. It’s doubtful that was related to tourism though.

There is nothing that stands out as particularly violent. The numbers don’t seem too different than at any other time here on the island or in the county. The big difference is when we have huge weekends of tourists, incidents of arrest go up. I don’t know about the rest of the country, and what the criminologists that study this have taken into account in other places, but I think anywhere you have a tourist destination, during the high season, you are going to see a higher crime rate.

Contact Mark Diaz If Charged With A Crime In Galveston County

In addition to whatever societal factors, you’ve got the population increased by 50,000+ over a holiday weekend. It’s not attributed to any local factors, other than a huge increase in population. Just something to take into consideration. Does crime increase during the summer in Galveston, the answer is yes, but it’s a skewed number because you’d have to pick out how many of those are locals. How many of those are people that are here from somewhere else on vacation? That’s all I’ve got this week. Have a good rest of your week, and I’ll see you all next Tuesday.

If you’ve been charged with a crime in Galveston County or the surrounding area contact Mark Diaz and Associates at (409) 515-6170