Dougherty County Police annual report shows decrease in numbers of criminal activity and and accidents

Chief Kenneth Johnson provided an update to County Commissioners Monday morning about the decrease in numbers.

ALBANY, Ga. – Did COVID-19 help fight crime locally? New crime stats from Dougherty County Police (DCP) were released this morning during the county commission meeting.

Last year’s numbers look relatively low for both accidents and serious offenses. Data presented during today’s meeting shows a comparison of DCP and the Albany Police Department (APD). It ranges from offenses such as criminal homicide to motor vehicle thefts. County police responded to only 3 calls in reference to criminal homicide while APD responded to 15.

As far as accidents are concerned, in the year of 2021 for DCP it has increased by 33%. Injuries fell 50 percent, along with fatalities decreasing by 60%.

“There were no complaints of injuries or any injuries report. Some of those were like deer wrecks who didn’t have any injuries. So injuries were down and fatalities were down. The year before we had 5 fatalities.” said Chief Kenneth Johnson with the Dougherty County Police Department.

The department is also down personnel, and are looking to recruit more officers to help better assist the community, and says they are doing all that they can do with the staff that they do have.

“…if we get more people, we can create other units; other divisions within the department. Say for instance our traffic unit. Something I want to create, I want to create a traffic unit to where it can go all over. When someone else complains, we can handle that complaint then. Sort of short on officers, but we can do the best we can do.” said Johnson.

Chief Johnson also says they are considering combining the gang task force with the Albany-Dougherty Drug Unit, being that they go hand-in-hand.

“…because drugs and gangs kind of go together. And we having those two unites separated, gang kind of working drugs, and drugs kind of working a gang. So we talked about trying to combine those two. But right now it’s still up in talk.” said Johnson.

Last year, DCP issued out 2,511 citations equating to $134,863.72 in revenue. There was a total of 14,171 dispatch calls, and the department also recovered $324,079 worth of stolen property.

You can watch the full report given by Chief Johnson below.