Criminologist James Alan Fox, of Northeastern University in Boston, said crime statistics are used “as a barometer of safety and of police performance” and said mass shootings should not be left out.

Police in Blacksburg, Va., list zero homicides for 2007, the year a gunman fatally shot 32 students, faculty and staff members on the campus of Virginia Tech, located within the city limits. The shootings are noted in Virginia Tech’s campus crime report.

Killeen, Tex., does not list the 13 peoplekilled at Fort Hood in 2009 because it occurred on a military base, but it did count the 23 people killed in Luby’s cafeteria in 1991. Oklahoma City, however, recorded the 168 people killed at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995, nearly doubling the state’s yearly homicide count from 226 to 400.

The Washington Post