TBI stats show city officers adept at solving crime
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Only Brownsville surpassed McMinnville in the percentage of crimes solved in cities with populations between 10,000 and 17,000. McMinnville boasted a 44.7 clearance rate.
The clearance rate was way ahead of similar-sized cities in the region including Shelbyville (28 percent), Tullahoma (26 percent), Dickson (25 percent), Manchester (10 percent) and Athens (33 percent). The numbers were from 2001.
“I think it’s a testament to the quality of people we have working here,” said McMinnville Police Captain Bryan Denton about the high clearance rate. “Our investigators are diligent about following up on cases and our patrol division is good at handling cases on the front end so they can be solved.”
While the study showed the upside for McMinnville, it also showed a downside – that being an exceptionally high juvenile crime rate. As far as crime, McMinnville ranked in the middle of the 20 cities included in its classification.
However, McMinnville more than doubled those cities in the number of juveniles arrested, reporting 219. The next closest city was Tullahoma with 102 arrests. Manchester had just 32 juvenile arrests during 2001.
The stats showed one in every six people arrested in McMinnville were under 18. A total of 1,091 people were arrested in McMinnville in 2001.
“This is disturbing and unacceptably high,” Denton said. “We’re trying to do public education and I know the juvenile court is doing some programs in hopes of bringing those numbers down. It shows we have a lot of work to do when it comes to juveniles.”
Also especially high were the number of people arrested on drug charges. McMinnville reported 227 drug violations. The number was rivaled only by Tullahoma with 193 drug arrests.
“You can trace it back to methamphetamine,” Denton said. “It’s no secret we’ve got a bad meth problem here, as does most of the counties on the Upper Cumberland. Of course, this number reflects arrests so it shows we are being very aggressive in arresting drug traffickers here.”
McMinnville stacked up about average on most other areas of crime, finishing middle of the road in crimes such as burglary, robbery and theft. McMinnville had a less than average number of assaults.
The TBI crime report is released annually. Denton said the report, which lets everyone know what law enforcement is doing in jurisdictions across the state, is good for agencies.
“It’s a great measuring tool,” he said. “This report showed us we are better in some areas than we first thought, but it also showed there are areas, such as juvenile crime, which we need to work on.”