Now that 2017 is in the books, the Tucker city leaders and I have been looking back and evaluating our law enforcement activity over the past year.The verdict for 2017 has been mostly positive. The highlight is that violent crime in the City has gone down by 30 percent. Property crime in Tucker is down by five percent. This is not quite as good as the violent crime reduction, but it’s moving in the right direction.I’m sure that if you have been the victim of one of these crimes it is little comfort to hear that “crime is down”. To that end, our objective now is, not only to maintain, but to improve on the progress that we achieved last year. There are several things that we are doing to make this happen:
- Constant monitoring of crime trends in Tucker and DeKalb County. Once we identify these “hot spots” where crime is occurring, our watch commanders make sure that there are increased police patrols in these areas.
- Improve community involvement. Ms. Donna Mann is our Public Education Specialist and she is constantly working to keep the community informed of important issues. She is also instrumental in organizing and supporting our community watches. A large part of the progress that we made last year can be attributed to the community and police working together.
- Finally, a major objective of the year is for DeKalb P.D. to add more officers to our force. Over the last several years, law enforcement agencies all over the country have struggled to maintain staffing levels. DeKalb County Police have not been immune to this trend. This year we are looking to add an additional 200 officers to our force. Ideally, we would like to recruit those officers from the neighborhoods that we serve. This is truly the ultimate form of being involved in your community. Anyone who may be interested can contact our recruiting office at 770-724-4554.
POLICE BLOTTER
“CASES CLOSED” – Our Tucker Precinct officers were able to close five cases in January involving Eugene Hunter. This is a guy you probably saw covered in the papers and on TV. He made news for his alleged role in fraud cases all over the Metro Atlanta area. After being arrested in Gwinnett County last year, Mr. Hunter ended up on our radar. We are proud to have been able to bring him to justice.
“YOU BETTER CHECK YOURSELF …” – On January 5, officers responded to the SunTrust Bank at 1849 Mountain Industrial Boulevard. The alert bank staff had determined a suspect was attempting to cash a check for $1,200. Only one problem: the check was a fake. The suspect was taken into custody without incident and charged with forgery.
“BURGLAR BUSTED” – On January 16, DeKalb Police assisted agents from Woodstock with a search warrant for a house in the 4000 block of Lawrenceville Highway. While executing this search warrant officers located items from several burglaries and entering autos from both Tucker and Woodstock.
