The Ridgeland Police Department just released their Uniform Crime Report (UCR) for the 2020 year, detailing type one crimes in the city. Type one crimes are murder, manslaughter, sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Under federal law, all type one crimes must be reported to the FBI through annual UCR.
The Ridgeland Police had a total of 1,076 type one crimes occur in 2020. There were 469 reports of larceny, 187 reports of auto burglary, 166 reports of shoplifting, 86 reports of petit larceny, 43 reports of aggravated assault, 37 reports of auto theft, 36 reports of burglary, 25 reports of grand larceny, 14 reports of robbery and 8 reports of sexual assault.
There were zero reports of rape, larceny with aggravated assault, homicide or arson. In other reports, there were 1283 motor vehicle accidents, 2523 alarms that went off, and 127 simple assaults.
Crime in the city is down from 2019. According to Ridgeland’s police chief, John Neal, overall crime is down but there is a spike in a category from the new way that crimes are reported. Auto burglary went from 66 to 187 from 2019 to 2020.
According to Neal, a string of auto burglaries that normally would have been reported as a single event, drove the number up. When someone rifles through several cars, it is reported as several crimes instead of just one event, which was decided in 2020.
Shoplifting, petit larceny, robbery have all decreased.
“Our guys and girls are doing a great job patrolling major thoroughfares, and the majority of our crimes did drop from 19 to 20 and as Ridgeland grows, its good putting up a negative number,” said Neal.
