Natchez Crime Rates Show Steady Decline: Police Chief Highlights Drop in Violent Crimes and Burglaries

NATCHEZ, Miss. –  Crime is down in Natchez, according to Police Chief Cal Green.

She cited “a steady decline in our most violent or horrible crimes”: four murders in 2022, three last year and two thus far this year with three months left. There have been 39 aggravated assaults this year, below the 54 reported in 2023 and 48 in 2022.

And “down considerably,” Green said, are simple assaults, which account for most of the categorized crimes in Natchez. There were 349 such assaults reported in 2022, 291 in 2023 and 238 so far this year as of Oct. 1.  

Green presented crime statistics Tuesday to Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson and the Board of Aldermen.

The number of Natchez home burglaries this year – 42 – is below 2022’s 77 but close to 2023’s 44. Automobile burglaries totaled 80 in 2022 and 64 in 2023. This year’s count: 47.

While Green credited her police officers for “making our crime stats go down,” the mayor and aldermen praised her leadership at the Natchez Police Department.

“You changed the culture there. It’s just way different than it was,” Alderman Sarah Carter Smith told Green.

Green was appointed by aldermen in December 2022 as Natchez’ first female police chief. She replaced Joseph Daughtry, who resigned to take over the Columbus Police Department.

Natchez’ two homicides so far this year – followed by the three in 2023 and four in 2022 – are close to numbers from most previous recent years: five in 2021, five in 2020 and three in 2019, according to statistics compiled by the Natchez Police Department and posted on the city’s website. Anomalies were in 2018, when 12 murders occurred, and in 2017, with just one murder.

The annual murder rates of recent years are higher than those reported in the early 2000s, when Natchez’ yearly numbers regularly ranged from just one to three from 2000 to 2010.

However, the recent annual burglary counts are lower than those reported in Natchez going back to 1994 till 2020, when numbers during that period exceeded 300 in two of those years and exceeded 200 in 12 yearly reporting periods.