Macon’s murder rate in 2023 followed a national trend. ‘It’s an improvement’

On a cool afternoon in east Macon just two days before Christmas, Artice Pettigrew, 52, died in a shooting that ended up being Macon’s final homicide of 2023.

The crime and the dramatic story behind it involved three men charged with hiding Pettigrew’s body in a car near Gray Highway and others making anonymous 911 calls. It was an all-too familiar scene, but nonetheless came with a silver lining — Pettigrew’s death was the 40th homicide in Bibb County of the year.

That’s down an incredible 30 murders from 2022’s tally of 70 — a total that shattered the city’s prior homicide record, according to Telegraph archives. It corresponded with a national trend that saw murders decline just about everywhere in the country.

Macon-Bibb County Sheriff David Davis called 2023’s drop-off a great accomplishment.

“I’m extremely proud of all our staff for the work they’ve done [last] year, and we wouldn’t have lowered those numbers without our investigators and our entire crew,” Davis said. “And for those homicides, in many cases we apprehended suspects within a day of those incidents.”

Nationally, New Orleans, which had the highest murder rate in the nation in 2022, saw a 25% drop in homicides in 2023. Baltimore’s homicide numbers fell by 25%, and Miami’s by 15%, according to ABC News. The murder toll also dropped in places like New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit — all traditional hot spots for violent crime.

The 40 homicides in Macon marked the lowest yearly total since 2019, when the city had just 26 homicides. The city has had more than 50 homicides every year since 2020. The 51 deaths in 2020 were the most since all the way back in 1992, when Macon had 43.

“It’s an improvement, but you want to eliminate all violence, but you make progress as you can,” Davis said. “Some violence … a deputy could be in the room or the house, and the violence would still happen.”

When Macon saw its high watermark for homicides in 2022, there were often stretches of the year that left multiple people dead in a short time. One week in December left six dead, including one shooting that killed three people.

The decrease in the homicide rate in 2023 comes thanks to multiple quiet spans, including parts of June and July where the city had no homicides for 20 or more days. One time frame — from July 18 to Aug. 19 — saw no homicides.

“It’s a blessing, that’s certain,” Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said. “It keeps morale and economic development up, and it’s just better for folks to be safe.”

Only two of the year’s 40 homicide victims did not die from gunshot wounds — Jefferey Giddens, 56, died from a blow to the head, and Gregory Smith, 16, was stabbed to death.

National homicide trends

Macon’s lower homicide rate could simply be a reflection of national trends, as outlets like ABC News and the Washington Post reported that homicides across the country plummeted in 2023.

“There’s also the fact that we’re coming out of that pandemic time … that created a different mindset and we saw a spike in crime during the pandemic, now it’s getting better,” Davis said. “And that’s true everywhere.”

The ties in Macon’s homicide rate to nationwide numbers is nothing new. The spike in violence the city experienced in 2020 was a phenomenon seen across the country — murders rose by 27% from 2019 to 2020 nationally, the New York Times reported.

In Georgia’s largest city, Atlanta, murders fell from 171 in 2022 to 135 last year, a 21% decline. Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said crime-fighting efforts will continue to focus on getting guns off the streets by targeting gangs and drug dealers, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“This isn’t an end, this is a beginning,” Schierbaum said. “We’re going to continue to fight crime. And we’re very fortunate that every day that we fight crime, we’re doing it in partnership with our mayor.”

Macon’s Chief Davis also credited the city’s leadership in the mayor’s office.

“So much of it is because of Mayor Lester Miller and the MVP [Macon Violence Prevention] program, the people in that are making a real effort,” Jones said. “(Miller) truly cares about everyone in this community, not just from one particular part.”

The MVP program is a government project that funds non-profit, religious organizations and other groups in collaboration with the Community Foundation of Central Georgia in an attempt to stem violence in Macon. The program doled out more than $1.6 million in grants in 2022 and 2023.

Nonviolent crimes tick upward

While Macon’s homicide rate fell drastically, crimes like commercial robberies and car theft numbers were up, Davis said, although final numbers were still being compiled and not yet available for those crimes.

“We’ve had more of those other crimes, things like breaking into autos are back on the rise, with people coming out of the pandemic, they’re going out more,” Davis said.

One string of burglaries just before Christmas saw one man accused of trying to break into nine different local businesses.

The biggest crime story of the year in Macon, however, came in the form of four inmates escaping from the Bibb County Jail in the wee hours of Oct. 16. The jailbreak led to a month-long search for the four men that involved the FBI, U.S. marshals and GBI and ended with the final inmate turning himself in after living in a homeless encampment.

“That obviously took a lot of our focus, but we caught them all, and we used all of our current technology to do it, and the silver lining is it showed we can do it,” Davis said. “If this breakout had happened five years ago, we would still be nailing wanted posters up.”

The technology Davis referred to partially consists of tracking cell phones, which helped authorities locate the escaped inmates. One of the inmates was found after a woman ordered Grubhub for him when a picture of his food sent by a delivery driver gave deputies the address where he was hiding.

Overall, where crime is concerned, Davis said the community was trending in the right direction.

“It takes a whole community to improve this, it is not just the sheriff’s office, so everyone has worked for this,” Davis said. “But we have to keep working. … We look forward to meeting the challenge.”