AMERICUS —



Americus, Georgia remains a peaceful place to live, work and raise a family. The men and women of the Americus Police Department (APD) continue to focus our efforts on improving the quality of life of our wonderful city through a dynamic commitment to Community Policing. In our 2012 Vision statement we emphasized our “continued development and growth into a premier Community Oriented Policing Agency.” Essentially our vision for 2013 remains the same as it relates to Community Oriented Policing.

The organizational culture of the APD stresses strengthening our law enforcement agency as well as our relationships with the community through transparency and good communications. We must ask the community to do the same.

A recent burglary problem we experienced in Districts 3 and 4 came to a successful conclusion (this past weekend) with 4 arrests through good communications and sound collaboration between the police and the community. In promoting a continuance of this dynamic we must emphasize the need for “good/quality” communications.

When a crime occurs in close proximity of our homes we have the propensity to feel violated. This is a normal feeling. The closer the crime is to where we live, the more threatened we feel. We perceive that we are not safe. However, most of the time this isn’t the case, and if we are practicing the measures recommended to us in our Neighborhood Watch and Crime Prevention meetings, we are safe. We must not allow insecure perceptions to become our realities. One only has to monitor social media sites to observe how distorted and damaging perceptions can be if we allow them to become our reality.

Let us recognize two important facts: 1) A small number of individuals are committing most of the crimes in our city 2) These individuals are recidivists / repeat offenders. APD not only is aware of this but, we are aggressively pursuing the individuals who are responsible for the majority of our crime issues. One only has to consider the following information to become a believer. Thus far in 2013, we have taken into custody 12 suspects related to burglary charges. This does not include suspects that have outstanding warrants but are not in custody. (We are searching for the individuals whom we have warrants on)

These are profiles of the 12 suspects we have arrested in the past 6 weeks:



• Suspect #1         9 Arrest/19 Charges

• Suspect #2        2 Arrest/3 Charges

• Suspect #3        3 Arrest/ 3 Charges

• Suspect #4        15 Arrest/24Charges

• Suspect #5        1 Arrest/ 4 Charges

• Suspect #6        5 Arrest/8 Charges

• Suspect #7        1 Arrest/4 Charges

• Suspect#8        4 Arrest/4 Charges

• Suspect#9        20 Arrest/29 Charges

• Suspect#10        9 Arrest/12 Charges

• Suspect#11        9 Arrest/ 18 Charges

• Suspect#12        3 Arrest/5 Charges



These 12 suspects have been arrested a combined total of 81 times and charged with approximately 134 violations.

Note: In 2012 we profiled 12 repeat offenders who were responsible for drug and violent offenses. They also had similar repeat offender/recidivist histories.

    The APD is dedicated towards eliminating all crimes and we work diligently towards doing so. However, our community members must join us in taking steps to eliminate the opportunity for criminals to commit the crime. Steps such as installing alarm systems in our homes, participating in neighborhood watch programs, joining walking patrols and keeping our eyes open to what is occurring in our neighborhoods; are just a few of the measures we can take.

In closing, we must work together to encourage collaborative relationships in our city as well as eliminate inaccurate perceptions. Americus must remain the peaceful community it is. Let’s all do our part. Attend the next Neighborhood Watch meeting in your district and join our team!