I meant to get to this yesterday but just ran out of time. Until you folks contribute to the “make Buzz a full time blogger” fund, I’ll have to struggle on at a non-shovel ready, non-TARP funded job.
The FBI released a report that seems to back up Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington’s claim that crime is down in the City.
In Atlanta, where the perception of crime might be worse than the actuality, the data could help quell some fears. According to preliminary figures, Atlanta had 672 fewer violent crimes in 2008 than in 2007. The city also had 24 fewer murders, 22 fewer rapes and 269 fewer robberies.
In August, in an article for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial page, Pennington noted that in 2009 those numbers have continued to go down.
“Atlanta is without question safer than it has been in decades. Over the past five years, we averaged 109 homicides, the lowest since 1964-1968,” Pennington wrote. “Every week we analyze crime trends. In 2009, crime is down 10 percent.”
So, will this knock the wind out of the sails of Atlanta’s Mayoral candidates, who are campaigning day and night on the issue of crime?
{ 6 comments }
From my information, the main issue seems to be petty break-ins and opportunity thefts. It’s not excusable, but understandable if 50% of the young black male population is unemployed or underemployed. Just saying.
Doubt it. Two problems. The public perceives crime as a problem because the incidents are very high profile. Also, although crime is down overall, it’s up in certain areas and those areas are being very vocal.
A lot of candidates and campaigns run off the notions of the public’s perception of issues, not necessarily the facts. Not having spent much time in Atlanta, I am not sure what the people of Atlanta think about Atlanta.
Just a wild guess, but I think the tone of the campaigns will probably be “We have had a good start in reducing crime, but we can do more.”
I’m curious as to what effect the removal of most housing projects has to do with crime, from the statistical standpoint.
There was a time, probably between 20 and 25 years ago, when crime stats were horrible, and the pols used the argument (usually pretty quietly) that the crime was contained within certain neighborhoods, and the majority of the city was “safe” – and generally implying that there wasn’t much they could do about the other because it was generally drug dealers fighting each other.
If (big if) we assume that argument to have been true, then many of these problems are now gone, or at least dispursed into different neighborhoods. So these new stats, if broken down by area, would probably be much more revealing on a zip code or voting precinct level. My hypothesis would be that there are areas of Atlanta that used to have very little crime that have quite a bit today, whereas areas of NW Atlanta that used to be “crime central” probably show lower overall crime stats, even though some of the newer residents wouldn’t perceive it that way.
I saw that on an episode of “The Wire”!
Now I’m having deja vu. Have we had this conversation before, or does every observation eventually lead back to an episode of “The Wire”?
Comments on this entry are closed.