It's true: Homicides, crime down in Memphis

Lt. Mark Miller breaks down the Memphis Police Department's

tracking of homicides for 2010. With 93 crime killings recorded

through the afternoon of New Year's Eve, the city is on track to

have its lowest number of victims since the late 1970s.


By Kevin McKenzie - December 31, 2010
The Commercial Appeal 

Perhaps for the first time since the late 1970s, the number of criminal homicides in Memphis in a year will not reach 100.

On Friday afternoon, New Year's Eve, the number of victims for 2010 stood at 93, according to Memphis police.

That's a dramatic drop -- 31 percent -- from a total of 135 crime killings in 2009.

Memphis homicide Lt. Mark Miller pointed to the department's  Operation Blue Crush  (Crime Reduction Using Statistical History) philosophy, which has been credited with helping to drive down overall crime in the city after its introduction in 2006.

In 2010, the number of major crimes reported in Memphis dropped more than 10.8 percent, according to Police Department statistics tallied through Thursday.

Compared with 2006, major crimes ranging from murder to theft plummeted a total of 26.5 percent.

"I think homicide is the one crime that you can't really anticipate, but it's also pretty much an indicator of the crime rate," Miller said.

When reviewing murder statistics, police prefer to focus on criminal homicides, which range from murder to manslaughter and vehicular homicide under Tennessee law.

The category does not include justifiable homicides, such as in cases of self-defense, where no one is charged in the death.

Memphis recorded 19 such cases in 2010, bringing the total number of homicides to 112 through Thursday.

One of the latest examples of a homicide ruled justifiable by Shelby County's district attorney was on Dec. 1, when a Memphis police officer shot and killed Larry Stone, 61, after he refused to drop a shotgun, police said.

Miller said the last time the number of criminal homicides for a year did not reach 100 was in the late 1970s.

Annual statistics from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report do not focus only on criminal homicides as police prefer, but for Memphis in the 1970s those numbers show murders sliding from 153 in 1973 to as few as 104 in 1977 and 103 in 1979.

Newspaper stories in 1977 trumpeted the crime decline.

"For the last 14 months, for the first time in Memphis' modern history, the crime trend has been reversed," said one story, by Menno Duerksen in a March 1977 issue of the Memphis Press-Scimitar.

However, by 1980 the number of Memphis murders recorded by the FBI statistics rebounded to 152. They peaked at 198 in 1993, before trending downward again to as few as 107 in 2004.

Nationwide, despite the Great Recession, violent crime has declined, with murder rates dropping by more than 7 percent in 2009, according to the FBI's statistics.

The trend holds true in some cities with populations similar to Memphis, including Nashville and Oklahoma City.

In Baltimore, print and television accounts on Thursday reported the 222 homicides there for 2010 through Wednesday represented a 25-year low.

In Milwaukee, the police department also points to data-driven policing as a key reason for a dramatic reduction in crime since 2007.

Even so, the number of homicides in Milwaukee surged in 2010, guaranteeing months ago that there will be a double-digit increase from 58 in 2009.

The police department in Kansas City provides a "daily homicide analysis overview" available to the public on the  department's website.  It showed 106 homicides through Thursday, compared with a total of 110 in 2009.

Rev. Ralph White, pastor of Bloomfield Full Baptist Church and a member of the city's Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board, remained skeptical about the police statistics showing the sharp drop in Memphis murders.

"That may hold true in some areas, but there is still a very real problem with crime in the city -- especially in the inner city," White said.

Still, he complimented the work of the police and sheriff's departments and the district attorney. Cooperation and grass-roots work by faith-based groups could also be showing results in reducing crime, he said.

"If the numbers hold true, that's great," White said.

-- Kevin McKenzie: 529-2348

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