Report: Overdoses are steady, burglary is down

While fatal overdoses remain steady, burglary, robbery and vehicle thefts are all down in 2023 compared to the year prior, according to the latest figures from a monthly report released by Hamilton County government.

Mayor Weston Wamp’s office has so far produced two reports in a series dubbed Hamilton Counted, which aims to provide an assessment of crime, substance abuse and homelessness. The latest, released Friday, encompasses Jan. 1 through Aug. 31, comparing figures to the same period in 2022.

It’s the first to include figures from all law enforcement agencies in the county.

“That’s huge,” Senior Data Analyst Jennifer Baggett, who prepares the reports, said in a phone interview.

East Ridge’s 2022 data is unavailable because the Police Department changed its records management system, the report states.

At large, Hamilton County saw 1,710 cases of burglary from vehicles in 2023 between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31. That’s down nearly 26% over the same time period last year. Likewise, there has been an almost 12% decline in automobile thefts, 843 so far in 2023 versus 943 last year.

Cases of robbery and burglary are also down, 16% and 10.6%, respectively. Law enforcement agencies tallied 1,225 aggravated assaults between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 in 2023, up 7% from 2022.

Data from the Hamilton County Medical Examiner’s Office shows there have so far been 135 fatal overdoses this year, slightly down from the 149 in 2022. Fatal overdoses in Hamilton County have more than tripled since 2017, rising from 51 to 226 in 2022. According to the Health Department, the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says can be up 50 times stronger than heroin, contributed to about 73% of those deaths.

Baggett spent the past four years as the analyst for the organized crime unit at the Chattanooga Police Department, focusing on drug overdose data. That spike in overdoses can be tied to the introduction of fentanyl into the community, she said.

“You can literally see it with data — heroin leaving and fentanyl entering,” she said.

The number of patients visiting the county’s homeless health care center on a monthly basis remains steady, hitting 926 for the month of August. Collectively, 3,219 unique patients have visited the facility in 2023, on par with the 3,196 in 2022.

Wamp’s communications director, Mary Francis Hoots, said in

a phone call the county intends to expand on the information available in the monthly reports, which could include releasing domestic violence and child abuse data. The county is also looking at adding location information so officials can map crime or overdose hot spots.

The goal of the data is to keep leaders accountable, Hoots said, and help them develop solutions, including, for example, how to best prioritize millions in opioid settlement funding the county will receive in the coming years from the state.