Detroit business break-in and vandalism statistics

Last updated October 30, 2026

The numbers in plain language

In 2025, Detroit police serviced 1,192 911 calls coded as business break-ins (“burglary, business”) and 4,938 calls about vandalism to any type of property. In 2026 so far, through Oct 30, 2026, the counts are 1,004 and 4,085. The 2026 figures cover only part of the year, so they should not be compared directly with the full 2025 totals.

A fairer comparison is the average per day. Dividing each count by the number of days it covers gives about 3.3 business break-in calls a day in 2025 and about 3.3 a day in 2026 so far, and about 13.5 vandalism calls a day in 2025 against about 13.5 a day in 2026 so far. (We calculated these averages from the published counts; the 2026 figure uses 303 days, January 1 through Oct 30, 2026.)

How to read these numbers

• A 911 call is a report, not a confirmed crime. One event can produce several calls, some calls turn out to be something else, and some break-ins are never reported at all.
• Most business break-in calls were made while it was happening. Of the 1,192 business break-in calls in 2025, 832 (about 70%) were coded “in progress”, 127 “just happened” and 233 were reported afterwards. That matters for planning: fast detection and a fast response are what make an in-progress call useful.
• Vandalism is counted for all property types. Detroit’s data does not say whether vandalized property was a business, a home or a vehicle, so the 4,938 figure covers every type and cannot be read as a count of businesses. About 90% of those calls were coded in progress.
• The data is not real time. The City publishes calls about a day behind, and it may revise records later, so totals can shift slightly between updates.
• These are city-wide totals. We do not compare one part of the city with another; a number for the whole city says nothing about any single street or building.

Longer-term trend in police report records

The “RMS Crime Incidents” dataset counts offenses recorded in police reports, homes and businesses combined. Burglary offense records went down each year from 2023 to 2025 (5,699, 5,615, 5,282), and damage-to-property offense records went down each year from 2023 to 2025 (13,007, 11,786, 11,074). These records count offenses, not calls, so they use a different method from the 911 counts above; the two sets of numbers should not be added together or compared one-to-one.

What business owners can take from this

Statistics cannot predict what will happen at a particular property. What they do show is that business break-in calls averaged about 3.3 a day city-wide in 2025, and that most are called in while the break-in is happening. The practical lessons follow from that:

1. Detect early. Door contacts, glass-break and motion sensors, and cameras with alerts give you or a monitoring service a chance to act while something is still in progress.
2. Verify quickly. Many alarms are false. Alarm response and verification sends an officer to confirm whether the building is secure, so a real event is not mistaken for another false alarm.
3. Make the property a harder target. Lighting at every door, solid rear doors, a visible empty register and clear sight lines from the street all help. Our guide to protecting a business from break-ins walks through them.
4. Be seen. Mobile patrols add unpredictable visits after hours, and security guards provide a constant presence where the risk calls for it.
5. Record what happens. Well-placed security cameras help police and insurers after the fact.

About this page

The counts on this page are built from two official City of Detroit datasets: “Police Serviced 911 Calls” and “RMS Crime Incidents”, published on the City of Detroit Open Data Portal. Data as of Oct 30, 2026 (fetched Oct 30, 2026). The counters at the top check the City’s feed for newer calls when the page loads; everything else updates when the site is rebuilt. We do not have monthly figures in our saved copy, so we do not describe seasonal patterns here.