ATLANTA — As of Tuesday, the Atlanta Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) has been called out to investigate 26 homicides since the first of the year. That number is down more than 50% from the same time period in 2022 – when the CID had already worked 55 homicides.
APD Deputy Chief Charles Hampton overseas the CID, which includes the homicide unit. He said this time last year the city knew they had a problem and admitted, "It was a gang problem."
APD launched Operation Heatwave going into the summer of 2022. Deputy Chief Hampton said it focused on "gangs, guns and drugs."
"It (Operation Heatwave) was a more focused approach on people and places and getting more units of the city involved, collaboratively sharing the information and really focusing on people who were driving the violent crime," he said.
Hampton said the operation helped in the decline of homicides through late summer and into the fall and winter of 2022. He said they've not let up and believes it's helped continue the downward trend of homicides into the Spring of 2023.
Homicides are down by 29 as of April 11, 2023, compared to the same time period of April 11, 2022. Deputy Chief Hampton said shootings across the city are also down about 14%.
"A large percentage of our homicides have been escalated disputes," Hampton explained.
He pointed out that with these domestic-type shootings/homicides, where both parties know each other and things just escalate on-site, there's not much they can do to prevent them so they work just as hard to solve them.
He said while these declines in homicides and shootings show that their proactive approach is working, they're seeing an alarming trend among kids in the city.
"We are seeing an increase in violence and crime involving kids," Hampton said.
Among these crimes include car break-ins, which often lead to much more violent ones.
"We know with these car break-ins and then obtaining these guns leads to other crimes, your robberies, your shootings," Hampton explained.
He believes there are several factors influencing this trend including a lack of family structure and geographical obstacles.
"Some of these kids live in areas that they become unfortunately desensitized to violence," Hampton said.
He added APD is working closely with the schools to try and reach these kids before it's too late.
"Some of these kids lack father figures (at) home so they're also looking for that sense of family," Hampton said.
Police know there are gangs across the city – who are just waiting to fill that gap and recruit these young kids, which leads them down a dangerous path that often ends in incarceration or even worse, death.
"We want these kids to know, 'Hey we are here, we're not just here to lock people up. We're here to be mentors, big brothers and big sisters.' We want to stand in this gap," Hampton said.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and the City of Atlanta launched the Year of the Youth earlier this year – an initiative to help Atlanta’s children, youth and young adults have the resources necessary to thrive.
"We (APD) also try to steer them into safe places where they (kids) can have an opportunity to say, 'You know what the streets aren't the place for me but let me go over here I can play midnight basketball, At-Promise center,'" Hampton said. "You have studios where they can work on music if they want to do that. We also try to use one of a number of our services at the promise center because we know sometimes it's the entire family that needs the resources to rectify what's going on."
Hampton said what they know for sure is they can't do this alone. He said a big part of their success has been the community stepping up and being involved.
"They're being more engaged," he said.
Hampton said neighbors are meeting one another, watching out for each other and calling police or crime stoppers – when something just doesn't seem right in their neighborhood. Hampton said if they can continue to get communities involved, it will only help them in preventing and solving crimes across the city.
"If you see something, say something," he said.