Atlanta’s crime drop shows partnerships between police and community pay off
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The headlines out of Atlanta are finally delivering some good news: a 32% drop in homicides so far this year, following a broader downward trend since 2022.
In a city that, like many others, has struggled with spikes in gun violence and social instability, this kind of progress is not just welcome – it’s instructive.
According to Mayor Andre Dickens, the city’s progress is not due to more arrests or harsher penalties. Rather, it stems from a deliberate shift toward investing in people.
As the mayor’s office put it, the decline is “the result of focused investments in community policing, youth programs, and stronger partnerships between law enforcement and neighborhoods.”
This points to an often-overlooked truth about public safety: real, sustainable reductions in crime begin not with punishment, but with partnership. It’s a reminder that trust is the strongest armor a city can wear against violence.
Children ‘stop going overboard’ when adults invest in them
This isn’t a novel concept, but it is one whose time has come. For decades, Professor David Kennedy of John Jay College has championed focused deterrence — a strategy that doesn’t swing blindly at crime but targets it like a skilled surgeon, addressing the sources of the bleeding while preserving the body. His work in cities like Boston, High Point and Kalamazoo shows that when communities and law enforcement act in concert rather than in conflict, the cycle of violence can be broken like a chain under strain — at its weakest link.
Credit: Bond5
Atlanta’s adaptation of this model — combining targeted enforcement with robust community programming — follows the same music but plays it in a local key.
A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article highlighted just how deeply these programs reach into young lives.
At a recent At-Promise Center field day, more than 700 young Atlantans danced with police officers, climbed rock walls and connected with mentors. Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum even called the At-Promise program “as important to fighting crime as 10 police officers are.”
The city’s Summer Youth Employment Program engaged over 5,000 young people in 2024, contributing to a 23% drop in youth crime and a 25% drop among 18-to-24-year-olds. These programs don’t just keep kids busy, they give them belonging and purpose — building bridges over the cracks where crime too often takes root.
This mirrors the reform work we launched years ago in Clayton County’s juvenile justice system, work inspired by Professor Kennedy. We found that the best way to stem delinquency wasn’t with courtrooms and handcuffs, but with counselors, educators, and mentors.
We removed minor school-based offenses from the court’s docket and redirected them to school-based interventions. The result? A 70% drop in juvenile court referrals and a steady rise in graduation rates. It was as if we had patched a leak in a sinking ship – suddenly, kids stopped going overboard.
Other communities across the U.S. should employ the Atlanta model
Credit: TNS
That work continues today under Chief Judge Salvia Fox, whom I recommended as my successor in Clayton County precisely because of her commitment to best practices in juvenile justice. Her creation of the Clayton County Handgun Intervention Program reflects a deep understanding of why many young people carry firearms — not to commit crimes, but out of fear and a sense of insecurity. She reminds us that the solution is not to throw kids into the “deep end” of the justice system for possession, but to show them the dangers of that path and offer alternatives.
What Atlanta is now demonstrating is that the same philosophy that keeps kids in school can keep communities safe. Crime doesn’t sprout in a vacuum. It grows in the cracks — those gaps left by poverty, food insecurity, inadequate housing and fractured families. When a neighborhood lacks stability, crime takes root like weeds in neglected soil.
But when law enforcement is seeded into the community — not as enforcers but as partners — something transformative begins. Trust blossoms. Norms shift. People begin to feel not just protected but seen. The police uniform becomes less a symbol of intrusion and more a thread in the social fabric.
Let’s be clear: accountability still matters. Atlanta’s police department is solving more homicides and deploying officers where the heat is most intense. But this is not a hammer looking for nails. It’s a scalpel guided by intelligence and informed by compassion. It is a form of justice that doesn’t just balance the scales — it builds a foundation beneath them.
Too often, the national debate on crime is like a tug-of-war between extremes — defund or overfund, punish or excuse. But Atlanta is choosing a different metaphor altogether. It is building a table, not a battlefield — one where law enforcement, residents, and city leaders sit side by side, sharing responsibility and power.
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What’s happening in Atlanta is more than a dip in numbers — it’s a rise in collective hope. Other cities would do well to study this model, not as a template to copy, but as a philosophy to embrace: that communities are not war zones, and their residents are not enemies. They are partners in the oldest kind of public safety — one built on trust, dignity, and the simple act of showing up.
Steven Teske is a retired chief judge of the juvenile court of Clayton County. He has testified before Congress on four occasions and many state legislatures on law and policy reform. He served on the Georgia Commission on Criminal Justice Reform, Child Welfare Reform Commission, Georgia State Advisory Group for Juvenile Justice, Georgia Children and Youth Coordinating Council, and Georgia Commission on Domestic Violence. He is an attorney for the Pascua Yaqui Pueblo Tribe in Arizona advocating for children, youth, and families and continues to help courts nationwide to develop school-justice partnerships.
