SPD’S Coleman, Bibbs, Mcwhirter speak to Kiwanis
Starkville police officers George Coleman, Kenya Bibbs, and Tonya Mcwhirter spoke to the Kiwanis Club of Starkville for their weekly program on Tuesday about the Starkville Police Department's efforts in combating crime and making connections with the community.
When Coleman started to speak, he talked about the Starkville Police Department's non-enforcement activities that relate to community outreach such as Coffee with a Cop, National Night Out, and D.A.R.E. along with others.
The one event that he pointed out is the upcoming 2023 National Night Out, which is a fun night of free food, fun, and games for the whole family to enjoy, and that will take place on Tuesday, August 1 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Starkville Sportsplex.
When Coleman handed the floor over to Bibbs, she talked about the current crime trends taking place in Starkville and what SPD is doing to combat those trends.
For Starkville, auto burglaries are the number one problem.
“Auto burglaries have been a major problem here, and the reason is because we get out of our vehicles and we don't think anything is going to happen because we live in a nice neighborhood, so we don't lock our doors,” Bibbs said.“we have young juveniles who come around and check each car door and take our valuable things. That's been a major problem for our community. We remind everyone on our social media to lock their doors and help prevent these auto burglaries from happening. Sgt. [Brandon] Lovelady does a wonderful job with putting reminders out there.”
Bibbs urges that prevention is key, and that can be done by making sure your keys are not in your car, locking your car doors, making sure car windows are secure, and making sure nothing of value is in your vehicle at all.
The same goes for residential burglaries. Key to preventing those acts from happening are by locking all doors and windows, closing all curtains and blinds, and when you're out of town, it is a good idea to have a neighbor check your mail.
When talking about recent adult recidivism rates, which means reoffending criminals, Mcwhirter says that SPD has a revamped reporting
system where law enforcement is able get the arrestee's name in, see maybe what they were charged with, how many times they were charged with a certain crime, and if they have a warrant.
“Individuals who recommit are apprehended by SPD in a timely manner. But what we find with our court system, unfortunately, it's lacking. So the cases aren't being pushed through like they need to in a timely manner,” Mcwhirter said. “So if someone gets out on bond, what they can do is they can go out and they can recommit those crimes. The court terms were reduced from four to three. So when we're dealing with four terms being reduced to three, that caseload has exponentially increased for each term.”
Mcwhirter used to be a juvenile officer as well as D.A.R.E. officer in Louisville. So she has a history of working with juvenile crimes.
“Juvenile offenders who are charged by SPD, they appear before the youth court judge, who is Lee Ann Turner. With her in place, the turnaround time for juvenile cases was reduced from 6 to 8 months to 1 to 3 weeks,” Mcwhirter said. “Sometimes in our situation in Louisville, we didn't hear back from the youth court counselor at all. So we never knew if the child actually went through court. So communication is pivotal, especially when you're dealing with juveniles.”