With
the final 2018 crime statistics in, we now know that in 2018 Marietta enjoyed a
resounding 12% average reduction in overall crime over the previous year, and
an aggregate reduction of 35% over the past four years. The Marietta Police
Department attributes most of the cities crime reduction success to training
our officers in advanced community policing techniques and strategic
data-driven deployment of our excellent officers. Nevertheless, a
policeman’s work is never done and the department is now embarking on a new
aggressive strategic plan for 2019 that will address the public safety issues
that are of most concern to Marietta citizens.
In
2019, our main areas of focus in terms of crime prevention will be the urban
and suburban crime issues that plague many of Metro-Atlanta jurisdictions, but
have not yet significantly impacted Marietta. Those issues include:
- Relatively new types of thieves that go by labels as porch pirates, door flippers, and sliders. Thieves are thieves by any name, and we are going to do everything in our power to prevent them from targeting
Marietta residents in 2019.
- Human Trafficking
in all of its ugly forms has grown exponentially by use of the internet
and social media in many cities. We are not going to allow it to
target Marietta children by getting a foothold in our community.
- Gang violence
is flourishing in far too many cities in America and we do not
intend to allow Marietta to become one of them. We will work aggressively,
but certainly not abusively, with our Federal, state and local task
force partners to keep gangs out of our beloved city.
The
most powerful and effective crime fighting and crime prevention tool we have in
Marietta is the trust and cooperation of Marietta citizens. Shortly we will be
announcing a new initiative to better empower Marietta Citizens to work with
the Marietta Police Department and we are confident that 2019 will be our
safest year yet.
Chief Dan Flynn
Marietta Police Department