MEMPHIS, TN – Shelby County District Attorney Bill Gibbons announced Wednesday that the number of cases the District Attorney’s Office handled in 2007 increased slightly from 2006, as reflected in the D.A.’s Office 2007 annual report. D.A. Gibbons also noted, however, that encouraging progress was made in the fight against gangs, guns and drugs in Memphis and Shelby County, as indicated by the crime statistics contained in the report.
The 2007 annual report is now posted on the Shelby County D.A.’s website: www.scdag.com. A limited number of printed copies will be available within a month.
The report provides an update to the community on where the D.A.’s Office stands in meeting its mission: to seek and achieve justice by pursuing the guilty and protecting the innocent.
Among the information contained in 2007 Annual Report is the following:
•After a discouraging 2006, when there was a peak in crime involving firearms, the community experienced a drop of almost five percent in firearms-related crimes in 2007. Likewise, there was a slight drop in the number of reported violent crimes committed by groups of three or more (an indication of gang violence). Still, both gun crimes and violent group crimes remain above the 2004 low point.
•In 2007, there was a decrease in a number of specific categories of crimes. The number of aggravated assaults reported in the city of Memphis decreased 3 percent compared to 2006, and 25 percent compared to 2005. Compared to 2006, reported robberies in Memphis decreased 8 percent, reported burglaries in Memphis decreased 11 percent, and reported auto thefts in Memphis decreased 5 percent. However, reported homicides in Memphis increased 9 percent in 2007 as compared to 2006. (This includes justifiable and negligent homicides.) There was also a 12 percent increase in the number of reported rapes in Memphis compared to 2006.
•Overall, the office’s caseload stayed fairly steady from 2006 (104,470 total new cases) to 2007 (105,371 total new cases), with the average number of new cases remaining slightly more than 1,000 per prosecutor. Part of the Operation: Safe Community strategic plan is to reduce the caseload per prosecutor ratio for violent crime and serious repeat offender cases. District Attorney Gibbons continues to seek help from the Tennessee General Assembly and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners to add more prosecutors for this purpose.
•For the third straight year, the number of drug charges flowing through General Sessions Criminal Courts exceeded 16,000 (compared to about 9,000 in 2003), and the number of drug-related offenses indicted approached almost 5,000 (compared to about 3,200 in 2003). “This is a reflection of a continued aggressive stance by the Memphis Police Department in going after drug trafficking,” Gibbons said.
•2007 marked a continued effort by the D.A.’s office to use state civil actions as a way of complimenting criminal actions in going after criminal activity such as drug trafficking and prostitution. To date, the D.A.’s Office has filed more than 100 nuisance actions to go after illegal activity at specific locations. In 2007, through the Drug Dealer Eviction Program, 194 drug dealers were removed from rental properties.
•Juvenile violence continues to be a major concern. The number of juveniles prosecuted for major violent crimes increased from 445 in 2006 to 540 in 2007. Also, the total number of juveniles prosecuted by the D.A.’s office increased from 2,869 in 2006 to 3,185 in 2007.
•Prosecutors disposed of 560 violent crime cases in 2007 covered by the D.A.’s No Deals or no plea bargaining policy.
•In 2007, 55 percent of the criminal court jury trials involved very serious—mostly violent—crimes (first degree murders, class A felonies, and class B felonies).
•The report notes that crime is not just a problem in Shelby County, but in other parts of Tennessee as well, with the state ranking second in the nation in its violent crime rate in 2006 (the last year for which statistics are available) and increases in the total number of reported offenses in 2007 compared to 2005 and 2006. “There is a continuing need for the General Assembly to enact tougher state laws to deal with the problem of violent crime. There needs to be a sense of urgency about this,” Gibbons said.
To read the 2007 annual report, log onto the D.A.’s website at www.scdag.com. Click on the “INFORMATION” tab, scroll down and click on “Annual Report.” From this screen, citizens may read the all of the office’s annual reports published since 2000. |