Though Decatur’s total crimes are up 13.5 percent over this time last year, the city’s overall crime has declined significantly the last two decades. Since reaching a high-water mark of 1181 total crimes in 1999—the city’s Uniform Crime Reports date to 1996—crime has dropped by 38 percent, to 734 total crimes last year. The city has not surpassed 1000 total crimes since 2008.
Until last September Decatur hadn’t had a rape reported inside city limits since 2011. Decatur police P.I.O. Lt. Jennifer Ross said the September rape occurred at a business, though she wouldn’t provide the name of the business or victim. The suspect, a stranger to the victim, was caught and jailed.
The city has had 11 homicides since 1996, the most recent last Dec. 6 when Karen Pearce was murdered downtown by a suspected serial killer. Most Decatur murders, Ross said, are domestic related, where victims and suspects know each other. Before Pearce, the last stranger-on-stranger killing was in Sept 2001, when a clerk working at Oakhurst’s Hop ‘N Shop store was shot during a robbery.
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