Jackson Free Press

Sept. 4, 2003

Police Chief Robert Moore seems a bit more relaxed these days. It was pretty touch-and-go for him there for a while, especially during television sweeps time last spring when property crimes happened to have spiked dramatically in the city and young men were committing a series of armed home "invasions" in Fondren.

Moore had to contend with all the rumors that he had brushed off rising crime as merely a "perception" with newspaper columnists not-so-subtly hinting that maybe he should just pack his bags and go on somewhere else. (He never said that the "perception of crime" was the problem, by the way; he had told reporters that "perception is fueling too much fear out there; we are going to get them [residents] the information, so they can decide.")

And when the new Metro Jackson SafeCity Watch hung all those blue-and-white balloons along Lynch Street en route to the historic Masonic Temple (after distributing detailed instructions on how to get to the famous building), it looked like a group had come together who just might send Moore packing.

But then the tide began to turn. The mayor and chief instituted a five-point community-policing plan in April that had their enemies grousing about "Policing 101," but that nevertheless made a lot of sense for Jackson. Police arrested the Fondren suspects and, it seems, SafeCity's efforts to raise big money and recruit hundreds of members fizzled. (Memo: It might have helped credibility to compliment the police for what they did right from time to time.) Now SafeCity is merging with the Metro Crime Commission, which has been adversarial to the police since it was established in the 1990s. And the police have racked up drug arrests—helping crowd the county jails even more—and they arrested fugitive Fred Hemphill, a suspect in the Captain D's shootout earlier this year.

For the past couple months, we've heard a lot less about crime statistics from the daily media. Perhaps they tired of the numbers game, or maybe they just aren't as fond of reporting figures that indicate that crime is settling back to about where it was before the spring spike. According to a Free Press analysis of monthly crime COMPSTAT statistics for the first six months of 2003, compared with the same period in 2002, overall major crime (criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, arson and auto theft) as of July 1 was up about 8 percent over the same period in 2002.

That single-digit number is likely good news to JPD after the demoralizing first quarter of the year. Due overwhelmingly to a large percentage spike in auto burglary, business burglary and car jacking, crime was up 18 percent in January 2003 over January 2002, and 29 percent in February over February 2002 (which had experienced abnormally low crime). In actual numbers, the burglaries were most alarming for that period with an average of nearly 16 auto burglaries a day in January 2003 alone, dropping to about 12 a day in February 2003, high numbers for winter months. It is important to note that a 280-percent spike in car-jackings in January—from 5 to 19—provided much of the percentage bump for that month.

By March, crime had dropped back to the same level as the year before where it continued to hover through June, except for a 7-percent spike in April. Probably the most encouraging news, comparison wise, is that the levels of larceny, which includes auto burglary, had dropped back to 2002 levels by summer. (No celebration, though: There are still 700-plus larcenies a month. And auto burglaries only have a 15-percent arrest rate nationally.)

In order to put Jackson's crime in perspective, it is important to compare the numbers to past years. Charts prepared by Clarion-Ledger reporter Gregg Mayer, who gave them to the police who then distributed them back to the media, show that Jackson crime has followed trends of the rest of the country. The early 1990s saw the city's highest crime rates in 20 years with nearly 30,000 major crimes a year from 1991 to '94. Throughout the booming economy of the 1990s, crime fell dramatically until it hit the 17,718 total marker in 2002—the fewest crimes in Jackson since 1988.

In the first six months of this year, Jackson's major crime total was 8,729 crimes. That's 641 more crimes than the 8,088 reported in the same period last year. That is, major crime so far this year is only slightly above the number reported in the safest year in Jackson in 15 years. Where we end up this year, obviously, depends on whether there are more spikes in particular crimes such as happened in Spring 2003. If not, Jackson could bring in its lowest crime total in 15 years, or its second lowest. And current levels are nearing the crime rates of 1984 and 1985, which were the lowest totals (under 15,000) in 22 years.

Any crime is too many, and every Jacksonian should work to prevent crime. However, don't let anyone tell you crime is at an all-time high, or anywhere near it, in the city of Jackson. Yes, that would be a perception. It's certainly not a reality.