Jackson Free Press

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Ward 6 Councilman Tony Yarber thanked the officers and command staff of Precinct 1 this morning for reducing crime in the South Jackson neighborhood.

Yarber said he routinely encounters constituents who have a skewed perception of the city's crime problem. Recently, he had to disabuse one frustrated citizen of her erroneous belief that city crime had increased threefold.

"Do I wish y'all would have caught the little monster that kicked my door in? Yep, but that's all right," he told police.

In fact, crime appears to be down throughout Jackson.

Jackson Police officials this morning reported a decrease in the total number of crimes for 2011 at this morning's weekly police briefing.

As of Jan. 1, the number of major crimes in the capital city stood at 12,405 compared to 11,929 in the same time period last year, for an overall decrease of 3.8 percent.

Property crimes were down 3.7 percent to 10,244 from 10,635 a year ago. Violent crime experienced a 4.8 percent drop. Last year, 1,685 violent crimes occurred compared to 1,770 in 2010.

Police Chief Rebecca Coleman warned officers against congratulating themselves prematurely, however.

Information compiled for JPD's internal use—colloquially referred to as COMSTAT—will differ slightly from the Uniform Crime Report, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation publishes and agencies to develop a crime profile for a geographic area.

For example, JPD breaks down auto house, and business burglaries into distinct categories, while the FBI lumps burglaries together, Coleman said.

She added that the FBI doesn't include justifiable homicides in its UCR figures; Jackson does, meaning the city could finish the year reporting more murders in 2011 than the FBI indicates.