That One Simple Trick That Cut Crime 21% in Atlanta

You’ve undoubtedly heard that crime is down in a lot of places. One trick often employed in places like San Francisco is not to report crimes. Shoplifting is no longer pursued, and employees of businesses can be fired for preventing shoplifting. So property theft crimes drop not because theft is no longer happening but because it is no longer treated as a crime.

Atlanta, Georgia, has seen a 21% drop in year-over-year crime. The Mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, faced with a secession effort in the northern wards due to crime and violent protests from the far left over a police training facility, has deployed a novel trick in The City Too Busy to Hate. He actually pushed law enforcement to enforce the law.

Under Mayor Dickens and Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum, the city began aggressively cracking down on gun crimes and gang violence. Buckhead, the financial center of the South and Atlanta’s northern ward, began agitating for secession after crime spiked. Random suburbanites were shot while jogging, home break-ins increased, carjackings increased — violence was on the rise after the former Mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, decided to side with rioters against the police.

Then Mayor Bottoms and the former Fulton County District Attorney, in a series of high-profile cases, prosecuted police officers for policing. They targeted one officer for shooting a man who had attacked an officer, fled, and attempted to tase the pursuing officer. That officer shot and killed the man and got prosecuted. Charges have been dropped against the officer. Other officers were disciplined for trying to get college students to stop their car during a riot. The result was a collapse of police morale, police leaving the force, and difficulty recruiting.

Mayor Dickens, upon taking office, had to do two things. First, he needed to calm Buckhead's nerves. Its departure would have dramatically cut tax revenue for the city. Second, he needed to ameliorate police morale. He did both by letting the police actually police.

The results speak for themselves. When I venture into Atlanta, I stay at a particular hotel due to its security and access controls. Whenever I have ventured out in the past two years, the valets at the front door have, without fail, warned me if it was too late to go out or where I should avoid. In the past few months, they have stopped. The situation has dramatically improved.

That’s not to say there are no problems. Drug problems remain. Homelessness and related crime are a problem. But the violence the city had seen has diminished as police have cracked down on unlawful gun possessions, gun crimes, and gang violence. Buckhead has breathed a sigh of relief. People are more prone to walk down Peachtree Street after dark. People have returned to Piedmont Park. The police are visible.

Atlanta stands in stark contrast to cities like Washington, D.C. where the Mayor and City Council have hindered the police and sent mixed signals about crime control. In New York, Mayor Eric Adams has sent police back into the streets deploying variations of “stop and frisk.” It has both cut crime and inspired progressives, including the local district attorney, to campaign against the efforts to reduce crime. Progressive prosecutors in New York, not the Mayor or police, are causing the problems. In West Coast cities, law enforcement has largely given up and crime reductions are often because police and victims have given up reporting the crimes.

Atlanta has had both leadership at the top and community buy-in from residents who feel safer and trust the police. To earn residents’ trust, the police have been engaged in the community and are both visible and available to residents. It has worked, and the results speak for themselves. It really should not be amazing, but too often in major cities, it is amazing — actually, getting tough on crime reduces crime. Other metropolitan areas could learn from Atlanta’s Mayor Dickens.