The first homicide investigated by the Atlanta Police Department this year involved an 18-year-old who died after he and two other men were injured in a targeted drive-by shooting. The case, which resulted in two arrests months later, highlights the methodical investigative work that propels the department to consistently close more homicide cases than the national average.
Initially, police could not identify how many suspects were involved in the Jan. 2 shooting of Montrevious Pitts, much less who the suspects might be. But by March, investigators had identified two men as the alleged killers and asked the public for help finding them.
The following month, 21-year-old Terrance Cole was taken into custody by Fulton County sheriff’s deputies in connection with Pitts’ death, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. On May 1, 22-year-old Desmond Lindsey was also arrested. Both are charged with murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. They remain in the Fulton jail without bond, online records show.
Pitts’ case is one of 36 homicide investigations that have been closed this year, according to APD data. There have been 62 homicides in Atlanta so far in 2024, largely matching the pace of last year. In the first six months of 2023, the city saw 59 homicides, but the count increased in the second half of the year to end with a total of 135.
That number represented a steep drop-off from 2022, when Atlanta recorded 171 homicides, the highest total since 1996.
Atlanta’s violent crime rates have roughly followed national trends, but APD’s consistently higher-than-average closure rates for homicides are an improvement from the tumultuous period around the COVID-19 pandemic. Violent crime spiked in 2019, setting off a wave of turnover in Atlanta’s city hall and police department.
Former police Chief Erika Shields stepped down in 2020, leading Rodney Bryant to come out of retirement and take on the interim role. Then, former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms chose not to seek a second term in 2022, setting the stage for the election of Andre Dickens. Bryant then announced his retirement in April 2022 and Dickens appointed Darin Schierbaum as the new interim chief. That interim title was removed about six months later.
Amid those leadership changes and national protests against police violence following the murder of George Floyd, the APD’s homicide closure rate sagged, dropping to 46% in 2020 and 54% in 2021, according to data gathered each year by the AJC.
Dickens and Schierbaum touted 2023′s precipitous drop in violent crime at a news conference earlier this year.
“We’re going to continue to fight crime,” Schierbaum said. “And we’re very fortunate that every day that we fight crime, we’re doing it in partnership with our mayor.”
Even if Atlanta’s downward trend in homicides has not continued in 2024, there are still some positive takeaways at the year’s halfway point: Police have returned to resolving cases at a higher-than-average rate, and aggravated assaults dropped by about 13% compared to last year, bringing down the overall violent crime rate.
Dickens and Schierbaum have each said APD’s homicide closure rate was about 79% in 2022, significantly higher than that year’s nationwide average of 52% reported by the Pew Research Center. At the time, it was “one of the highest closure rates in the nation,” Dickens said.
The department’s rate fell to 62% in 2023 and has held relatively steady at 59% through the first half of this year. However, closure rates tend to increase as the year progresses and more cases are resolved.
The FBI’s crime statistics are not yet available for 2023 but, according to Pew, closure rates for homicide cases are decreasing nationwide. The national average has slipped about 10% over the past five years.
Recent closure rates are a return to form for the APD, which consistently beat the national average in the years before the pandemic. The department’s rate from 2010-2019 wavered between 64% and 98%, according to a data review by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. During that time, Atlanta saw an average of about 90 homicides a year.
Among those arrested in Atlanta’s 36 homicide cases this year are suspects with extensive criminal histories. Cole and Lindsey, the men accused of killing Pitts in the year’s first homicide, each have multiple open criminal cases in Fulton Superior Court.
Lindsey is a felon who was convicted on gang charges and spent nearly two years incarcerated between jail and state prison, court records show. He was released from prison in September but remained on probation, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections’ records.
Cole has three open cases in which he’s charged with violent crimes, court records show. In addition to Pitts’ killing, which includes several gang-related charges, Cole is accused of shooting at and kidnapping his girlfriend in October, according to his arrest warrants. During that incident, he allegedly tried to run her over with a Volkswagen sedan as she stood in her yard, the warrants said.
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