Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steve Anderson said despite a growing population and the adversity of the tornadoes that devastated the city in April, Tuscaloosa is becoming a safer place every year.

“The numbers have gone down,” Anderson said. “For the last several years, they’ve gone down. Usually you would expect that as the population increases, you’d see an increase in crime. We’ve seen sort of the opposite. We have seen small amounts of decrease every year. Right now, compared to where we were last year, our numbers are down in all of our major categories that we’re tracking, except in auto theft, which is slightly higher.”

Anderson said the decreases could be attributed to many things, but on campus, despite a marked increase in student population every year, credit was owed to the strong relationship between the campus police department and the city’s.

“You could contribute it to the ongoing safety programs being put in place at the University, but especially look at the working relationship between the University of Alabama Police Department and the Tuscaloosa Police Department,” Anderson said. “Over the last several years we’ve come together a lot more and worked together a lot more to make not only the campus area safer, but also several areas off campus where students live. UAPD is more actively patrolling those areas, and that’s increasing our presence in the area, and that gives us more eyes out there.”

Anderson said that students need to know that safety is not just an issue for the police department.

“It’s everyone’s responsibility,” he said. “Be sure to secure your valuables, lock your apartment and your car, record the serial numbers of your electronic items or weapons, since those are the items most commonly stolen in property crimes, and that’s our biggest challenge, property crimes, particularly burglaries and unauthorized breaking and entering of vehicles. More people are victimized in this city by property crimes than any other crime.”

Anderson said that TPD was working vigorously to bring those numbers down. He said they are identifying and patrolling criminal hotspots and implementing bait houses, which are made to look empty and valuable to attract criminals, but have silent alarms that directly notify the department when the house is being burglarized.

“Also, when we’re catching these individuals, if they are repeat offenders, the judges and courts are working with us,” Anderson said. “A lot of our repeat offenders, we’re making sure they stay behind bars a lot longer.”

Anderson said he was also pleased with the lack of a spike in crime following the tornado in April.

“The tornado displaced people, and fortunately the biggest thing that we’ve seen with that displacement is a direct correlation with our call volume. There’s been a steep decrease in calls for service from Alberta City, but also increases in other places in the city where those residents relocated.”

Anderson said residents of Alberta City generally relocated to similar, less affluent parts of Tuscaloosa and that the changes in call volume were not necessarily related to increased crime, but to the reliance of those lower-income families on police services for other needs that are often not criminal.