The Associated Press
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) - Atlanta officials say crime has been going down, despite a recent study that ranked it as the third most dangerous city in the nation.
This year, Atlanta was rated the third worst city in crime by Morgan Quitno, a Kansas firm that ranks cities by their crime rates. Only Camden, N.J., and Detroit were ahead of Atlanta.
The Morgan Quitno rankings look at six major crimes reported each year to the FBI: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and automobile theft.
Police Chief Richard Pennington said Monday he knows Atlanta has a high crime rate but there are signs of improvement. In fact, such surveys may “help our cause,” Pennington said, because they get the public and city officials talking about the problem.
Pennington said the rates show crime has gone down since he arrived in 2002.
In 2003, Atlanta had 20,780 reported crimes. As of Nov. 13, Atlanta had 17,876 reported crimes this year. But with 48 days left in the year and the holidays approaching, the final number of reported crimes remains uncertain.
Also, Pennington said that by the end of the year, the police department will be nearly back to its authorized staffing level of 1,732 officers. When he came into office, it was less than 1,600, he said.
A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, a downtown advocacy organization, said his organization has been fighting such crime studies for years.
“It does have some impact on people’s perception of the city, right or wrong,” Robinson said. “When people hear reports of crime, they think ‘downtown.’ ”
Robert Friedmann, a criminologist at Georgia State University, said per-capita crime rates are deceiving because pockets of high crime can skew a citywide average.
“Most business in Atlanta is done in the convention area, in the downtown area, in the hotels area,” Friedmann said. “Those areas are relatively safe.”
City officials have long fought the perception that Atlanta has a dangerously high crime rate.
In 1989, Atlanta officials were irked when Washington officials released a study saying Atlanta was the nation’s most dangerous city. And in 1996, then-Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers caused a stir when he said Atlanta’s streets were more dangerous than those in war-torn Sarajevo.
The Morgan Quitno study also ranked Macon the ninth most dangerous city in the nation among those with populations ranging from 75,000 to 99,999.