An economy on the skids brought an expected increase in burglaries in Gainesville and Hall County in 2009, though officials believe the spike in the numbers could have been worse without a full-court press of enforcement efforts.

Most other property crimes numbers were stable, and the area’s relatively low violent crime numbers mostly went down.

Final crime statistics for the year showed Hall County with a 23 percent increase in burglaries over 2008 and Gainesville with a 33 percent increase, according to data provided to The Times this week. Hall County saw an increase of 152 burglaries compared with 2008, while Gainesville had 87 more.

A burglary is generally defined under Georgia law as the act of entering a home or commercial building without the owner’s consent with intent to commit a theft or felony. Burglaries can be committed by breaking and entering or by walking through an unlocked door.

Burglaries are counted separately from thefts, the most common of which are shoplifting cases or thefts from yards. The theft rate in Gainesville and Hall County virtually stayed the same.

Every recession since the 1950s has brought higher property crime rates, and this one has been no exception.

“The trend is statewide as well as national,” said Col. Jeff Strickland, chief deputy of the Hall County Sheriff’s Office. “We knew as the economy began to take a downturn, it was going to effect us tremendously.”

Gainesville: Community interaction key

Gainesville police predicted more burglaries in a recession economy, and the numbers bore out that forecast.

Flatscreen televisions, jewelry and laptop computers were among the most-stolen items, with almost all residential break-ins committed during daylight hours when homeowners were at work. Several burglaries were committed by people who stowed the stolen items in nearby woods to pick up later, police said.

Interim Police Chief Jane Nichols said hard times have led some to take chances they may have been reluctant to take before.
“Most people are concerned about being inside a dwelling and risking a confrontation with the homeowner,” Nichols said. “But some folks are more willing to take that risk now because of the economic situation and the need for fast cash.”

There were 349 burglaries in Gainesville in 2009 compared with 262 the previous year.

But Nichols believes it could have been worse without enforcement efforts that included more targeted patrols, surveillance work and partnering with neighborhood watch groups. That work paid off in several burglary arrests and the recovery of stolen property, she said.

“I think the numbers would have been a lot higher had we not done the things we did to try to maintain some kind of control over it,” Nichols said.

With the exception of homicide, violent crime numbers in Gainesville were down. Violent crime in Gainesville and Hall County remains relatively low.

Gainesville Police officials said they had two murders in 2009 after going without a murder in 2008. Still, that number is low for a city of 30,000 residents where the daytime population grows to an estimated 100,000. In 2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the national murder rate was 5.6 per 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“While we’re happy these violent crimes have stayed within our control, we understand that these property crimes are very significant to the victims,” Nichols said. “We take these property crimes very seriously and use a lot of manpower to try to be proactive and keep these numbers down.”

In 2010, the police department looks to expand its crime suppression unit and use new forensic tools as it focuses on problem areas.

Community policing also remains key in battling burglaries, Nichols said, with active neighborhood watches playing a major role in crime prevention.

The police chief would like to see more people use the department’s anonymous tip line: 770-533-5873.

“There’s a tremendous strength when we all work together, when we communicate and cooperate” she said.

Hall County: New action plan to be more sustainable

The Hall County Sheriff’s Office expected to see an increase in burglaries and it did, with 23 percent more homes or businesses entered illegally in 2009 than the previous year.

“With the downturn in the economy, we are seeing people who once worked who are now unemployed and trying to steal to survive,” Strickland said.

The sheriff’s office made a push to address property crime by saturating problem areas with deputies from all divisions of the sheriff’s office, and in one operation arrested 90 people on charges ranging from drugs to probation violations. The office also recovered $46,000 in stolen property.

Taking deputies away from their normal daily duties to add extra feet on the streets is “effective, but can’t be sustained,” Strickland said.

The sheriff’s office this year will put in place a new burglary action plan “which we believe will be more sustainable,” Strickland said.
The plan will include crime mapping and analysis to assign manpower to problem areas, Strickland said.

Violent crime was down across the board last year, with two murders in Hall County in 2009 compared with three the previous year and nine fewer aggravated assaults. Overall violent crime was down 10 percent in Hall.

Violent crime, also known as crimes against people, are admittedly the most unpredictable and hardest to control through proactive efforts, Strickland said.

“Many violent crimes like homicide are crimes of passion that occur between people who know each other,” he said.

Strickland said sheriff’s employees, despite furloughs that have sapped the agency of some 4,000 man hours a month, put a concerted effort into property crime prevention in 2009.

“They realize the issues we’re dealing with with these burglaries and have worked hard to prevent them,” he said.
And it could have been worse, Strickland said.

“The crime statistics are far better than we expected to see with the emerging trends we were seeing in late 2008,” Strickland said.