Police chief announces 2006 Nashville crime stats during meeting at Lipscomb
Janel Shoun |
All the major broadcast media outlets were on hand at 9 a.m. in the Ezell Center to record the announcement and interview the police chief and mayor.
“There is no question that other cities our size and larger are struggling with increasing crime, but 2006 was the third year Nashville experienced a drop in crime,” Serpas reported to the mayor and an audience of Lipscomb students and faculty, community members and police personnel.Chief Serpas arranged with Lipscomb President Randy Lowry in the fall to bring the Nashville police department’s weekly CompStat meeting to campus in an effort to increase community awareness of the event and provide an educational opportunity for students.
The meeting is open to the public and includes detailed reports of criminal activity in each precinct. Normally held at the North Precinct headquarters, the meeting’s location on Friday offered residents in the Southwest portion of Davidson County a first-time, convenient opportunity to hear statistical summaries of incidents, details of specific arrests and crimes and discussion of proactive activities by the commanders of all six precincts.
As well as Chief Serpas’ good news about Nashville crime this past year. 2006 marked a 17-year low in overall crime, a 16-year-low in violent crime and a 27-year-low in property crime, he said. “That’s a very good sign of health in our communities,” he said.
Mayor Bill Purcell praised the police department for not only its timely report of annual statistics, but also for its weekly CompStat meeting ,which brings current information on crime trends and effectiveness of tactics in each precinct each week to all police leaders and the public.
“For police officers and the public, we need to know what (the police) are doing right now,” said Purcell. “And what you have done with CompStat is share what is going on right now, neighborhood by neighborhood and even block by block.
“The people of Nashville feel closer to the men and women of the police department than ever before in our history,” he said.
Chief Serpas took time to answer questions from students about the crime statistics and law enforcement operations and welcomed everyone to the meeting by noting that “policing has evolved into something more robust than it has ever been before,” with officers carrying out a wide range of community policing, direct intervention and self-directed duties.
Lowry said he was happy for Lipscomb to host the CompStat meeting because it would foster a mutually beneficial relationship between the university, especially its new Institute for Conflict Management, and the Nashville police.
“You serve us virtually every day, but we want to be of service to you,” he told Serpas. “We are looking for every opportunity to make things easier for you.”
“Lipscomb has become a place where important issues in the city are studied, and we appreciate you allowing us to use this facility,” Purcell told the Lipscomb audience.
Nashville’s weekly CompStat meeting was established by Chief Serpas, a strong advocate for community policing and the accountability-driven management system called CompStat. CompStat has been adopted by major police departments throughout the nation and is credited with cutting violent crime in half and reducing police misconduct in many areas.
When he came to Nashville in 2004, Serpas established the weekly CompStat meeting as a tool to keep the department’s management team focused and to hold them accountable for their crime fighting and community policing efforts.
Serpas announced Friday that in 2006, property crime dropped 5.8 percent, violent crime dropped 1.2 percent and that every precinct boasted crime reductions, with the Central Precinct leading the way with an 8.8 percent drop.