Terry Richards | The Valdosta Daily Times

VALDOSTA, Ga. — Statistics show Valdosta’s overall crime rate has gradually declined during the last five years.

“The city is safer now than it’s ever been,” Police Chief Brian Childress said Thursday.

Numbers compiled by the police department show the overall number of reported crimes in Valdosta has been on a downhill slide after peaking in 2011. That year, 3,582 crimes were logged by the department, falling off to 3,067 in 2014. In 2015, the number of crimes was pegged at 3,083, virtually a dead heat with the previous year.

Of the 2015 total, the great majority — 70 percent — involved some form of larceny. At the other end of the scale, there were only four cases of homicide investigated that year, so few as to be statistically insignificant.

The police department forwards crime statistics to state authorities, and eventually the numbers are passed upstairs to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which produces its own analyses of the nation’s crime. Small discrepancies often appear between the police department’s numbers and the FBI’s data, Childress said, because some reported crimes are investigated and reclassified after the data is sent to the feds.

“Let’s say we investigated 200 burglaries in May,” the chief said. While the tally reported to the FBI says 200, the police department may later investigate and determine that five of those “burglaries” were false reports or otherwise cleared, so the police department adjusts its tally to 195.

“If done properly, the (local police) should always have more accurate information” than the federal government, he said.

Valdosta’s lowest crime rate in the 21st Century was in 2004, with fewer than 3,000 reported incidents, according to the department’s numbers. This was followed a few years later by a sudden spike in 2008-2009, coinciding with the great financial meltdown of 2008 which pushed the country into a recession.

Reported crimes topped 3,400 in Valdosta in 2008; that year, automobile thefts alone skyrocketed from an annual average around 160 to 646.

Childress called the economy one of the prime movers as far as crime.

“It’s the haves and the have-nots,” he said. “The have-nots will do what it takes to get what they want.”

Another factor in crime rates, he said, is population density — the more people living within a given area, the more crimes there will be. Childress said more than half the population of Lowndes County lives within the 38-square-mile city limits of Valdosta.

The leveling off of Valdosta’s crime rate is all the more remarkable because the city’s population has grown, the chief said. In 2000, the city’s population stood at just above 43,000; in 2012, there were more than 57,000 people in the city, an increase of almost 33 percent.

Other findings in the police data:

• The number of rape cases in Valdosta was cut almost in half between 2011 and 2015;

• The number of arson cases in the city increased slightly since 2011, from 10 that year to 13 in 2015;

• Assault cases have declined overall since 2011, though the assault rate has climbed in the last two years.

• Valdosta’s police solve 95 percent of their homicide cases, compared to a 62 percent national homicide solution rate, the chief said.

A successful police department relies on its relationships with both the community as a whole and with prosecutors, Childress said. He stressed the need for successful community involvement to keep crime rates down.

“One of the biggest problems we have is when someone says they saw a suspicious person but were afraid to call 911,” he said. “There is no penalty for calling 911 for something that turns out to be an honest mistake.”

The chief said while gangs are known to operate in Valdosta, gang violence is not as pronounced as in other cities and the police department is on top of the problem.

Another relationship of a different kind Childress stressed was the way local officials don’t interfere with the workings of the police department.

“I’ve never had a mayor or a councilman (in Valdosta) call and try to get a ticket fixed or anything of that sort,” he said.

With the Christmas shopping season approaching, the chief said people can take several steps to safeguard their belongings.

“Lock your presents in the trunk or take them home,” he said. “Don’t leave them sitting out on the seat in the car where anyone can see them.”

He said he “begs and pleads” people to buy alarm systems and to write down merchandise serial numbers. Pawn shops are required to send serial numbers of their goods to police regularly, and officers stopping suspicious people can run serial number checks as well, he said.

“It’s not Mayberry anymore,” the chief said.  

Terry Richards is senior reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times.