The total number of violent crimes, including aggravated assaults, robberies, rapes and homicides, reported in Statesboro dropped 42% from 2021 to 2022, the Statesboro Police Department showed in its 2022 annual report.

Chief of Police Mike Broadhead delivered the report to the mayor and City Council during a Feb. 21, 2023, work session and highlighted certain aspects in a side show. Rates of some violent crimes, particularly aggravated assaults and robberies, vary considerably from year to year, as seen  in a graph showing the  numbers from 2012 through 2022.

“Something I’m pretty happy with is to look at our violent crime numbers,” Broadhead said. “As you know, I like to track these over about a decade as opposed to just the last year-to-year because things can fluctuate. But you see all of those major indices really have plummeted.”

In 2022, the combined total of the four major violent crimes reported in Statesboro was 65, including 36 aggravated assaults, 14 rapes, 12 robberies and three homicides. But in 2021 there had been a total of 113 of these violent crimes, including 65 aggravated assaults, 25 rapes, 20 robberies and three homicides. That amounts to 42% fewer of these crimes as an aggregate. A printed version of the report stated 41%.

2020 remains exception

The number of homicides actually remained fairly steady through most of the previous decade, usually three or fewer killings each year, with one dramatic exception.

In 2020, when many work and school situations were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, nine individuals lost their lives by homicide – being killed by another person, whether ultimately found to be a murder or not – within the city limits. Through more than a decade before that, the peak year had been 2014, with four homicides. But after the surge to nine killings in 2020, there were three homicides in the city limits in 2021, and three again in 2022.

“In 2020 of course we had a terrible spike in homicides, and we met in this setting and I told you I didn’t think that was our new normal,” Broadhead reminded the mayor and council last week. “And of course the next year were at three and then we were at three again in 2022.

“I’m really happy to report that our last homicide was in May of last year, so we’re at about eight months or so,” he continued. A council member quietly asked if he really wanted to say this out loud.

Again, while the count of homicides repeated at three, the numbers of the other major violent crimes in the city limits dropped in 2022 as compared to 2021. But 2021 had been a peak year for reported rapes, with 25, up from 16 in 2020. Previously peak years were 2012 and 2017, with 16 rapes also reported each of those years.

Property crimes

Over the 11-year period charted in the SPD’s annual report, the total of property crimes also trended downward, Broadhead noted. But this total  ticked upward  about 2.5% from  2021, when  there were  639 property crimes reported – including 507 larcenies, 104 burglaries and 34 motor vehicle thefts – to 656 property crimes in 2022 – including 517 larcenies, 99 burglaries and 40 motor vehicle thefts.

Larceny is a catch-all category for non-robbery thefts of personal property. Burglary means unlawfully entering a structure with intent to commit a crime, whether or not anything is taken.

“Property crime has continued its trend downward,” Broadhead said. “You can see over a decade that larceny has gone from over a thousand cases reported to last year, half of that. You can also see that burglaries have decreased over a decade to less than 100 from nearly 300 ten years ago. So those are good numbers.”

In 2013, the peak year for larceny crimes during the past decade, 1,061 had been reported. In 2012 there had been 297 burglaries.

The motor vehicle theft rate, as Broadhead acknowledged, has remained relatively constant. There were 46 such thefts in 2012, before the number dipped to 19 in 2014 and 20 in 2015, but the count of vehicle thefts remained in the 30s all other years until last year’s 40.

“One thing I think that it’s important for us to do is to try to manage the perception of crime as much as crime in reality,” Broadhead said. “We can look at statistics and we can say, ‘Well, this is great, everything is trending pretty much downward, which is great.’ But with the rise in social media, the fear of crime has been just blasted out there, right?”

He said the Statesboro Police Department is “very transparent when crime occurs in the city,” telling people what happened “just for community knowledge” and actively announcing when arrests are made for violent  crimes.

“But it does lead to people thinking that we have a terrible crime rate, which we just do not…,” Broadhead said. “Crime is low here, and it’s continuing to trend low.”

The report also includes a breakout of the use of firearms in specific types of crimes. In 2022 six robberies involving firearms were reported in Statesboro, down from nine in 2021 and 12 in 2020. Last year there were 10 aggravated assault or battery incidents involving firearms, down from 19 in 2021 and 27 in 2020.

Why the improvement?

“It’s complicated,” was Broadhead’s conclusion when phoned for an explanation of the dip in crime. Since violent crime dropped dramatically last fall, he suspects that someone who would have been responsible for more crimes got locked up or simply moved away, he said.

But he likes to think other factors contribute to longer-term trends.

“I think the police are a part of the solution, but generally speaking, I think crime rates are on the community itself. …,” Broadhead said. “You know, healthy neighborhoods have less crime, and a healthy business climate has less crime.”

So things such as the city’s investment in parks on the west side and ongoing improvements in housing are probably helping, he said.

“I think that the work that we have done in the Police Department to establish good relationships with the community, that’s a  piece of it. It has helped,” Broadhead said.

Report in context

The statistics in the SPD report only include crimes in the city limits. They do not include crimes that occurred in Bulloch County outside Statesboro, even in built-up residential and commercial areas just beyond the city limits.

Besides crime stats, the report includes basic data on hours of training for Statesboro police personnel, the number of cases opened and cleared by detectives, calls for service answered or initiated by patrol officers, traffic citations, Statesboro’s worst intersections for car crashes, K-9 unit and SWAT team activity, use of force incidents and citizen complaints.

The 2022 annual report is available to the public at www.statesboropd.com under the “Community” then “Annual Reports” tabs.