Chattanooga had the third-lowest violent crime rate and the highest property crime rate for 2009 when compared to Tennessee’s largest cities, an analysis of an FBI study shows.
“Anything the FBI does a report on, they’re reporting the numbers that we gave them. We already know [the crime numbers],” Chattanooga police Chief Bobby Dodd said. “We use our resources to combat those whenever they come up.”
The FBI study, entitled “Crime in the United States” and released Monday, also shows Chattanooga has the second-largest police force per population when ranked against the other five cities with a population of 100,000 or more – Clarksville, Knoxville, Memphis, Murfreesboro and Nashville.
2009 POPULATIONS* Memphis: 667,421* Nashville: 610,176* Knoxville: 185,850* Chattanooga: 172,536* Clarksville: 121,661* Murfreesboro: 105,910POLICE OFFICERS PER POPULATION* Memphis: 2,202 officers, or 1 for every 303 people* Chattanooga: 432 officers, or 1 for every 399 people* Nashville: 1,433 officers, or 1 for every 426 people* Knoxville: 388 officers, or 1 for every 479 people* Murfreesboro: 218 officers, or 1 for every 486 people* Clarksville: 239 officers, or 1 for every 506 peopleVIOLENT CRIME PER POPULATION** Memphis: 1 offense for every 55 people* Nashville: 1 offense for every 88 people* Knoxville: 1 offense for every 95 people* Chattanooga: 1 offense for every 96 people* Clarksville: 1 offense for every 151 people* Murfreesboro: 1 offense for every 152 people* Includes murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assaultPROPERTY CRIME PER POPULATION** Chattanooga: 1 offense for every 13 people* Memphis: 1 offense for every 14 people* Knoxville: 1 offense for every 16 people* Nashville: 1 offense for every 21 people* Murfreesboro: 1 offense for every 22 people* Clarksville: 1 offense for every 27 people* Includes burglary, larceny theft, motor vehicle theft and arsonGEORGIA DATA* Fort Oglethorpe population: 10,000* Violent crime: 32* Property crime: 802* Dalton population: 34,299* Violent crime: 118* Property crime: 1,232Source: FBI
For every 399 citizens of Chattanooga’s 172,536 last year, there was one police officer employed by the Chattanooga Police Department. The Scenic City was behind only Memphis and ahead of the police departments of Nashville, Knoxville, Murfreesboro and Clarksville.
Even though Chattanooga came in fourth in terms of violent crime, there aren’t many pre-emptive options that police have to prevent it, Dodd said.
“There’s not a lot you can do to prepare for someone who’s just evil or violent,” he said. “You can’t say, ‘I’ve got a feeling this guy’s going to pull a gun any minute and start robbing and killing.'”
But, he said, there some are ways his department has been working to stop violence before it happens, such as breaking up drug and gang rings.
Although Chattanooga is first in property crime, Dodd said his department has been going through an “educational process” to see what works for property crime prevention. He said the most effective techniques in stopping property crime come from citizens – installing alarms and organizing neighborhood watches – because police cannot monitor all parts of the city at all times.
“Unless we had a cop stationed at every home, there’s no way we can control when someone’s going to snap and [commit crime],” he said.
One possible explanation for Chattanooga’s property crime levels is the amount of construction springing up in the city and surrounding region, including the new Volkswagen auto plant in Chattanooga and Costco Wholesale in nearby Catoosa County, Ga., said Roger Thompson, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
At Costco, “people were coming in and taking the copper and even taking the steel girders,” he said. “If we’re in a period of heavy construction, the first thing that comes to my mind is those are probably some of the sites that are immediately hit.”
But for larger metropolitan areas, Thompson said, higher crime rates are inevitable.
“In the city, one of the weakness factors in that is anonymity and people are strangers,” he said. “And the criminal element really likes to take advantage of that.”
Nationwide for 2009, violent crime declined 5.3 percent and property crime declined 4.6 percent when compared to 2008, the study shows. The study, available on the FBI’s website, includes crime totals for every incorporated city in the United States.
Those numbers aren’t anything new to their respective police departments, said Robert Casey, a section chief for the FBI. But, he said, some departments may analyze data from comparable cities.
“Every chief of police I’ve ever known gets data on a daily basis that morning,” Casey said. “We accumulate the statistics, and what a chief of police or a head of state police or a sheriff would do, that’s up to him or her based upon the data they have.”
Contact Michael Stone at 423-757-6673 or mstone@timesfreepress.com.