County officers among best at solving crime: Sheriff Dept. shines when compared to other counties
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The bad news: Warren County’s crime rate is higher than the state average. The good news: Almost no one in the state is better at catching criminals than the Warren County Sheriff’s Department, which arrested criminals at twice the state average.
The report revealed the sheriff’s office solved 55.4 percent of all reported crimes during 2002, a number which by far surpasses all county’s of similar size in the state.
“We just work hard, and I can’t give our employees enough credit for what they do every day,” said Sheriff Jackie Matheny of the high county clearance rate. “We did well last year, but this year has been even better.”
Overall, Warren County ranked fifth in crime solving, trailing only much smaller counties with significantly lower numbers of reported crime. Aside from Pickett County, which claims to have solved all 73 crimes reported there during 2002, Smith County had the highest clearance rate at 65 percent based on 269 crimes. Cannon County also had an eye-catching rate, with 57 percent of its 398 crimes cleared last year. Grundy County, which solved 52 percent of its 152 crimes, was close behind.
However, the task was on a grander scale in Warren County where 997 crimes were reported to the sheriff’s department last year. Warren County ranked near the middle in the number of crimes for similar-sized counties (populations 30,000 to 40,000). Warren County shined in comparison to Monroe County where 2,177 crimes were committed with only a 17 percent clearance rate and Lincoln County (Fayetteville) where 1,020 crimes were reported with a 28 percent clearance rate.
The rate was also well above that of Bedford County with 481 crimes (25 percent clearance) and Franklin County with 732 crimes (32 percent clearance).
In the area of arrests, no similar-sized county even came close to Warren County with its 2,001 arrests last year. The closest were Loudon and Franklin counties, both with just over 1,200 arrests.
The Warren County number was actually closer to Rutherford County with its 3,023 arrests. As a mean of comparison, Warren County has a population of 38,276 to Rutherford County’s 182,023.
The arrest numbers rang true in the area of juvenile arrests where Warren County ranked the highest in similar-sized counties with 275. Only Loudon County with 195 juvenile arrests cracked triple digits in juvenile arrests. Rutherford County had 384 juvenile arrests.
“The high juvenile crime rate is something that has puzzled us for a long time,” Matheny said. “Some of it can be attributed to having officers at the schools, which accounts for some of that number, but there’s still obviously a problem there that’s been building for quite a while. But, there is a lot of effort being made to try to deal with the juvenile crime problem.”
Spurring the way in the arrest rate were arrests on narcotics charges with 192. Loudon County (population 39,086) again was the only similar-sized county to enter triple digits in drug arrests with 157.
“Our meth problem has a lot to do with our entire crime rate,” Matheny said. “Drugs have a direct impact on all areas of crime such as domestic violence, burglary, theft and violent crimes. It’s important we work drugs hard because by doing that we can also cut into other areas of crime since they are mostly related to drugs.”