TBI Crime Report Shows Putnam County Decrease

A TBI crimes report released Wednesday Putnam County crime decreased 24.5 percent in 2019 from 2018.

Reported crimes such as aggravated assault and vandalism declined last year. Sheriff Eddie Farris said the community’s involvement attributed to the crime decrease.

“That certainly helps us solve crimes, and people know their neighbors,” Farris said. “We have a good group here of people that certainly watch out for each other and share information.”

Farris said although the sheriff’s department was investigating and solving these crimes, reporting errors were frequent in 2017 and 2018. He said the department has improved their efforts since then.

“I think we were solving a good number of the crimes over the last few years, and the reporting was not getting done either correctly or wasn’t getting sent in to the proper place to get added to the whole crime overview statistics that’s kept up with with TBI,” Farris said.

According to the TBI report, aggravated assault reports fell from 104 in 2018 to 72. Destruction/damage/vandalism incidents decreased from 191 in 2018 to 147. The cases of theft dropped from 301 in 2018 to 251 in 2019. Motor vehicle theft in the county decreased from 94 in 2018 to 67 in 2019.

The statistics are compiled by the TBI. The 2019 figures run through May of this year.