Owners who leave their guns in unlocked motor vehicles continued to be a major source of guns stolen in Statesboro during 2021, according to the Statesboro Police Department’s annual report.

Of course, those guns are then in the hands of criminals and available for use in other crimes.

“Stolen firearms from vehicles, this is the bane of our existence here,” Chief of Police Mike Broadhead said when the relevant slide appeared on the screen during a Feb. 15 mayor and council work session.

His visuals also included slides charting officer training hours, trends over a decade in the numbers of violent crimes and property crimes in Statesboro’s city limits, and shorter-term counts of major crimes where guns were used and of vehicle crashes at the intersections where they occur most often. Incidents involving the use of force by officers, internal affairs investigations and citizen complaints are also things the SPD tracks statistically.

Back in 2019, Statesboro police investigated 30 thefts of firearms from vehicles. Just four of those were “forced entry” thefts, meaning from locked vehicles. The other 26 were “non-forced entry” thefts, meaning the vehicles were left unlocked, or perhaps a gun was left in the open bed of a truck or in an unlocked toolbox.

In 2020, of 58 gun thefts from vehicles within Statesboro’s city limits, only five were from locked vehicles, while the other 53 were from unsecured vehicles. 2021 saw a 10% decline in the total number of gun thefts from vehicles, to 52, but only two of those were from locked vehicles.

Broadhead’s slide displayed three pie charts. A small slice of each, becoming narrower each year, represented the thefts from locked vehicles. He didn’t cite percentages, but the numbers show that 87% of the vehicle gun thefts in 2019, then 91% in 2020 and 96% in 2021 were from unlocked vehicles.

“I’m not sure if people are aware of this or not, but when your car comes from the factory, it has locks built right into it,” Broadhead quipped, eliciting some laughter from the council and audience. “So, it’s a good idea to use those.”

Traffic in guns

He moved rapidly through other topics in about a 10-minute initial presentation. Afterward, during question-and-answer time for the elected officials, District 1 Councilman Phil Boyum commented, leading to an observation from Broadhead that most of the guns stolen here do not stay here.

“The only other comment I would make is, if there was one thing citizens could do to make Statesboro less of a target for crime, it would be, ‘Lock your doors,’” Boyum said. “I mean, 50 guns (the number taken from unlocked vehicles in 2021 alone) are on the street. It’s less safe.”

“Lock your doors, for sure,” Broadhead said, “and I’ve heard the same complaint from the Savannah Police Department. Most of our stolen guns we don’t recover here in Statesboro. We find them in other locations, but we’re recovering other people’s stolen guns.”

This tells him that the traffic of stolen guns, like that of drugs, is “flowing constantly,” he said.

“I think that the guns that are stolen in Statesboro generally are out of town very quickly, but then other guns are being brought in from other places,” Broadhead said.

Gun crimes down

But 2021 brought a drop in the number of major crimes committed with firearms in Statesboro. This followed a surge in aggravated assaults with guns in 2020 but continued a multi-year downward trend in robberies.

The number of robberies reportedly committed using firearms, which was 24 in 2019, declined to 12 in 2020 and nine in 2021. The number of aggravated assaults reported involving the use of firearms had increased from 20 in 2019 to 27 in 2020, but dropped back to 19 in 2021.

“Crimes committed with firearms is one of the numbers that we really look carefully at, at the Police Department, simply because the lethality is much higher,” Broadhead said.

The number of aggravated assaults of all types, with and without guns, rose from 61 in 2020 to 65 in 2021, but there had been 66 in 2019 and 57 in 2018.

“Some of that is because a lot of those aggravated assaults in 2021 were with hands and feet. …,” he said. “Basically, aggravated assault with hands and feet would be where somebody suffered a fairly serious injury, but that could be a broken nose, a broken jaw, something like that.”

Murder rate drops

After the much-noted surge in homicides during 2020, when there were nine lives lost in killings within Statesboro and a few others elsewhere in Bulloch County, the number of homicides dropped dramatically. Only three homicides that occurred within Statesboro were reported and investigated in 2021.

“So we have settled back into more of a normal number for us,” Broadhead said. “We typically average about two to three a year.”

Indeed, the previous peak in the 11-year trend line was 2014, when there were four homicides in Statesboro. The 11-year average is 2.9 homicides a year, and with 2020 removed, the average for the other 10 years is 2.3.

The one type of major violent crime for which Statesboro saw a sharp increase in 2021 was rape, with 25 rapes reported last year, the most in least 11 years. In 2020, there had been 16 rapes reported, after 12 in 2019 and previous peaks of 16 reported rapes in 2017 and 2012.

As presented, the 2021 report contained no comparison to other cities. Some other aspects of the report may be explored in future stories.