CANDLER PARK — Major Keith Meadows, the commander of Atlanta Police Department's Zone 6, came to the July meeting of the Candler Park Neighborhood Organization on Monday to give residents an update on recent incidents and answer questions about recent trends.
One of the alarming trends are the ages of the people committing crimes – with some as young as 13 years old – he said.
To that end, as most of Atlanta Public Schools go back into session next month, he said he's looking to develop a truancy map to plot the residences of juveniles relative to crimes in those areas.
That plan is similar to other mapping strategies he has in Zone 6, such as vacant properties, which can be targets for crime, as well as those recently released from prison.
Teens are of a particular focus as they have been suspected in several incidents.
They are tied to or suspected to incidents not only in Zone 6, which includes Candler Park, East Lake, Reynoldstown and Grant Park, but also the neighboring jurisdictions of Decatur and unincorporated portions of DeKalb County.
They also very savvy about jurisdictions, Meadows said.
They will steal a car from Decatur, rob someone in unincorporated DeKalb and then commit burglaries in Atlanta.
"What they understand is that it takes a while before Atlanta realizes that a car was stolen out of Atlanta," Meadows said.
Indeed, he cited a recent case of a gray Dodge stolen out of Decatur tied to three burglaries in Atlanta, and then several other crimes in DeKalb's unincorporated areas.
The three departments – Atlanta, Decatur and DeKalb –have been communicating more and have been meeting to map out multi-jurisdictional strategies to address those and other crimes affecting all three of their respective areas.
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