Despite a knifepoint robbery in the early hours of 2010, the Athens Police Department has taken a bite out of major crime since 2004 based on a new police report, a department official said.
Crime is down
arrests are up said Tom Pyle, Athens Police Department Captain. That means our clearance rates are up. Crime is down for the most part.
Aside from robberies, which increased from six in 2008 to 10 in 2009, officers have been able to solve more cases, Pyle said.
The report, compiled by police, compares this year's arrest numbers, calls for service and federal reports on crime in the city to those from the previous six years, Pyle said. A call for service is the first phone call from a resident reporting a potential crime is occurring.
Pyle added that his office will release the full report in February.
It's damn near impossible to correlate that more arrests equates more crime; you can't draw those kinds of conclusions Pyle said.
A conclusion that can be drawn from more arrests is that officers have been able to focus on crimes that are reported, he said. Pyle added that more arrests might show that officers can now focus on those crimes because they have fewer to investigate.
Last year, APD arrested 63 people for assault after calls for service, up from 38 the year before, Pyle said.
Although residents made 186 calls to service last year, 118 were reportable calls of assault, Pyle said, adding that a reportable crime is one that describes what has actually happened in the situation.
[For example] we have a call for service record that says theft but the report is robbery. We leave it as theft because of liability
Pyle said. If a person calls in and says 'I was robbed' we go lights and siren; if anybody ever says
'Why didn't you run lights and siren for this person?' we can say they called in and said it was
a theft.
The Athens Police Department receives around 13,000 calls annually, but only around 1,800 to 2,500 of these calls are reportable crimes, Pyle said.
In neighboring Nelsonville, crime has remained steady compared to last year because of recent break-ins, which may be tied to the ubiquitous drug problem in Athens County, said Sgt. Edward Kurtz of the Nelsonville Police Department.
I'm sure everything is related back to the drugs
Kurtz said.
Kurtz said he does not have the report compiled with an exact number of arrests from 2009, but that he expects it to be similar to those of 2008, especially because of the recent break-ins.
Athens County Sheriff Patrick Kelly disagrees with these conclusions, saying that crime rates in Athens County are increasing.
Part of it is because the economy is terrible
Kelly said.
Kelly added that there have been more arrests on child exploitation and breaking and entering within Athens County in 2009.
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Libby Cunningham
