The Chattanooga Police Department released its 2024 annual crime report, trumpeting a 49% decrease in fatal overdoses, a 9% decrease in crimes against people and a 24% decrease in traffic collisions over 2023.
Police Chief John Chambers called the decrease in traffic collisions crazy, attributing the accomplishment to drivers citywide slowing down. The report was released Wednesday.
“Speed is the No. 1 contributing factor,” Chambers said in an interview. “So the faster you drive, the higher your chances are of getting killed in a crash even if you’re not at fault, right? We have a traffic unit that does a really, really good job of being proactive and trying to slow people down.”
The number of collisions resulting in casualties fell by nearly half from the year prior, from 41 in 2023 to 21 in 2024, but the number of collisions resulting in incapacitating or non-incapacitating injuries jumped 21% and 204% respectively. There were 179 collisions that resulted in non-incapacitating injuries, and 906 collisions that resulted in incapacitating injuries.
“The way I interpret that is that people citywide are driving a bit slower, at least slow enough to not get killed in a crash,” Chambers said.
In 2023, when Celeste Murphy was still chief, she implemented a policy in which officers no longer responded to car crashes without injuries. Department spokesperson Sgt. Victor Miller confirmed that policy is still in place, but officers do respond to traffic crashes on the interstate.
The numbers reported from 2023 and 2024 are both representative of the number of crashes officers responded to.
Overdose numbers also fell, with a 49% decrease in fatal overdoses and a 32% decrease in overdoses in general. The number of victims of fatal overdoses in 2024 totaled 84, and there were 471 victims of nonfatal overdoses. The police department partners with local organizations to help keep those numbers down, Chambers said.
The crimes against people number, including offenses such as homicide, assault, forcible sex offenses and the like, continues a downward trend that began after a peak in 2021. In 2024, there were 1,388 crimes against people. Keeping those numbers down comes from proactive work in the community and the department’s approach to policing as a whole, Chambers said.
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The police department practices a community-oriented policing model, meaning officers are in the community building relationships and trust. Chambers has recently reintroduced the Police Activities League, geared toward organizing activities for children in the community to interact with officers that patrol the area.
Partnering with groups like the 423 Chain Breakers, the department has made reducing retaliatory violence a priority, Chambers said. In many cases, one act of violence will spark a string of violent incidents in retaliation. Chambers’ goal for the police department is to reduce retaliatory actions.
“We’re never going to prevent all crime,” Chambers said. “That’s just, it’s just not reality. But what we can do is identify the areas where we might be able to interrupt that, and that is the purpose of us partnering with them.”
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Moving forward, the chief said the most room for growth is in community engagement, including making additional efforts to reach youth and the Latino community.
He said that is a difficult area because of cultural differences and the state of the country.
“There’s a lot of fear just wearing the uniform and a lot of unknowns for that community, and us just showing up to hold an event in their community is not going to go over well, right?” Chambers said.
Contact Kailee Shores at kshores@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659.