Rates versus numbers. Geez. The population of humans (or human like creatures) has grown substantially. Just for simple numbers sake (easy to calculate in the head) that 20 years ago there were I million folks in WW. Violent crime was 2%, or 20,000 violent crimes. Today, we have 2 million folks, 30,000 violent crimes, and rate or 1.5%.

Voila', rate drops and number of crimes increases so you both might be right.