Homicide 94 Robbery 1,995 Total violent crime 5,203 | Forcible rape 170 Aggravated assault 2,944 Burglary 4,781 | |
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Crime in Atlanta, Georgia is above the national median and has been a major problem for the city since the middle 20th century. However, in recent years, the crime rate has begun to decline. Between 2001 and 2009 the crime rate in Atlanta dropped by 40 percent, according to the FBI. Homicide fell 57 percent. Rape was down 72 percent. Violent crime overall was down 55 percent.
Contents
- By location
- History
- Policing
- Crime rates and trends
- Homicide
- Gang crime
- Human trafficking
- Notable incidents
- References
Atlanta’s public safety improvement between 2001 and 2009 occurred at more than twice the rate of the rest of the country. After ranking in the top five highest violent crime cities for most of the previous three decades, in 2009 Atlanta ranked 31st, and in 2015, 24/7 Wall Street ranked it 19th. While various news sources report rankings by crime rate, FBI strongly cautions against this, because this is a misuse of bare statistics, since it ignores various important factors, such as population density, degree of urbanization, composition of population, economic conditions, etc.
By location
At certain points in its history, Atlanta has been known for high crime rates, particularly property crime and homicides. Much of the city's crime, however, is centralized in most of its western neighborhoods and scattered neighborhoods adjacent to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. These include Grove Park, Center Hill, and Bankhead, some of the most crime-infested neighborhoods of Atlanta.
History
During the 1970s, like with many large cities within the United States, Atlanta's population began to decline. By 1990, the population was 394,017, down almost 20% from its population in 1970, which was 496,973. In addition, the city center and surrounding areas began to go through an urban decay, and crime spiked significantly throughout the 1980s. Along with many other major cities in the United States, Atlanta was hard hit by the crack epidemic of most of the 1980s to early 1990s. In 1994, Atlanta was ranked the most dangerous city in the country by the Morgan Quitno Press.
In 1997, drug-related crime in metro Atlanta increased slightly, in part due to Atlanta becoming an important distribution center for cocaine, and other related drugs imported from Mexico. These increases were mostly seen in Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Cobb, and Clayton counties. Many law enforcement agencies in the area have joined forces together with the Atlanta Police Department in an effort to decrease the overall crime in metro Atlanta.
In addition, due to large amounts of revitalization projects in the city core, crime continued to fall, even amidst the hard economic times of the late-2000s/early 2010s.
Policing
The city is served by the Atlanta Police Department. In 2013, the APD had 2,000 officers, but the number of officers has decreased since that time. Mayor Kasim Reed has identified an increase in the number of officers to 2,000 as a goal for the city. Although city data shows that APD attrition rates have improved from the 2000s to 2013, morale issues within the police department has persisted due to officer dissatisfaction with salaries. About 45 percent of officers hired between 2005 and 2013 left the force by 2017. Atlanta is divided into six police patrol zones.
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), which operates rail, bus, and parking lots in the city and surrounding area, has its own police force. Overall crime rates in are about 30 per every 100,000 system daily riders, which is identical to the crime figure for the Washington, D.C. area's WMATA, higher than crime figure for the Boston area's MDTA, and lower than the crime figure for the San Francisco area's BART. Homicides within the MARTA system have varied. In the fiscal year ending in 2017, for example, there were four homicides investigated by MARTA police, but there were no homicides in the MARTA system in any of the previous last four fiscal years. Total crimes in the MARTA system have declined from fiscal year 2013.
Crime rates and trends
From 2009 to 2016, overall crime in Atlanta declined 27 percent, "with sharp declines in burglaries (9,102 in 2009 to 4,377 in 2016), robberies (2,622 to 1,914) and aggravated assaults (2,602 to 2,179)."
Homicide
Consistent with national trends, the murder rate in Atlanta peaked in 1990 and have declined since. From 2000 to 2010, murders in the city declined by nearly 50 percent. The years 2009 and 2012 had the lowest numbers of homicides in Atlanta than any year dating back to 1963, but there has been an increase in murders in the city beginning in 2013. The number of murders in Atlanta was 80 in 2009, 92 in 2010, 88 in 2011, 85 in 2012, 82 in 2013, 93 in 2014, 95 in 2015, and 111 in 2016. A significant number of murders have remained unsolved; as of February 2017, 51 of the 111 homicides from 2016 remain unsolved.
An analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Report data for 2015, conducted by the economic analysis website 24/7 Wall Street, showed a murder rate in Atlanta of about 20.2 per 100,000 people, making it the 18th highest murder rate among U.S. cities. A October 2016 FiveThirtyEight analysis of preliminary 2016 data, taken from official police information and local reports, found that among U.S. cities with populations of over a quarter-million people, Atlanta had the tenth-highest murder rate, at 23.9 per 100,000 residents.
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said that 17% of 2014 homicides in the county were gang-related. In Atlanta, guns were involved in 82% of homicide cases. In July 2016, in an attempt to combat an increase in homicide, the city began Operation Whiplash, with additional police officers and other resoures assigned to 33 "challenging and crime-ridden" neighborhoods in the city.
Gang crime
Street gangs of various levels of sophistication have a presence in the city. In 2015, Atlanta police were tracking about 120 gangs, more than double the number identified six years earlier. The supervisor of the FBI's Atlanta Safe Streets Gang Task Force said in 2016 that more than half of violent crime in the city was involved gang members. In addition to violent crime, drug dealing, and carjacking, some Atlanta gangs committ identity theft and credit card fraud.
Human trafficking
Atlanta is now a major transportation hub when it comes to trafficking young girls from Mexico and is one of the fourteen U.S. cities with the highest levels of sex trafficking of children.
In the year of 2007 the sex trade generated $290 million in Atlanta.
Since Atlanta has “the same ready access to commercial air and ground routes that draws businesses and travelers to Atlanta also entices criminals engaged in human trafficking”. There are numerous events and conventions in Atlanta that bring many people to the city which also exemplifies the issue.