Druid Hills Civic Association - Neighborhood Safety

SERVING THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF DRUID HILLS

A COMMUNITY NESTLED IN THE HEART OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA

NEIGHBORHOOD SAFETY

The Druid Hills Public Safety Committee is chaired by Doug Rollins. We are working on multiple approaches to addressing crime within our community. Please send any neighborhood public safety concerns to: publicsafety@druidhills.org.

See our TRANSPORTATION ISSUES PAGE for the latest articles about transportation development.

DRUID HILLS crime OVER four years

Learn more about our DHCA Public Safety Committee's 2018-2022 Crime Study

Beginning in May 2018, the Druid Hills Civic Association’s Public Safety Committee has been tracking all crimes reported in Druid Hills. A new report summarizes the four years of detailed data and provides a baseline as we focus on how to make Druid Hills an even safer place to live.

Summary
1.     Crime in Druid Hills is low compared with Georgia and the United States. Crime on streets with primarily single-family homes has been trending downward since September 2019. Meanwhile, crime in commercial areas and apartment complexes has been increasing as a percent of all crime in Druid Hills.

2.     Violent crime is extremely rare in Druid Hills; there were no murders and only nine aggravated assaults in the neighborhood over the four years.

3.     About 90% of all crime in Druid Hills is property crime, and the rate as a percent of the population is lower than in Georgia and the U.S. Over the four years of our study, only 18 burglaries occurred on the 95 single-family streets, or about 4.5 per year.

4.     Larceny, theft from motor vehicles in particular, is the largest category of crime in Druid Hills, comprising 68% of all crime in the area. These auto-related crimes have been trending somewhat lower since May 2020, near the beginning of the pandemic, than in the prior two years.
Download the full Four-Year Druid Hills Crime Report

Druid Hills Crime Report: February 2024 11 total crimes
in DeKalb County: 11 crimes
Case #	Type of crime	Address	Date	Day	Comm’l or Resident’l Complex
24- 016129	Simple assault	1900 block N Decatur Rd	2/27/24 @ 12:32 am	Tues
24- 016013	Simple assault	1700 block Briarcliff Rd (Sage Hill Shopping Center)	2/26/2024 @ 3:40 pm	Mon	√
24- 015411	Simple assault	1200 block Rock Springs Ct	2/24/2024 @ 12:30 am	Sat	√
24- 013942	Simple assault	600 block Rock Springs Ct	2/19/2024 @ 7:30 am	Mon	√
24- 013545	Theft from buildings	1400 block Oxford Rd (Emory Village)	2/16/2024 @ 6:00 pm	Fri	√
24- 012088	Simple assault	1600 block Briarcliff Rd	2/12/2024 @ 12:00 pm	Mon	√
24- 011016	Simple assault	1000 block Briarcliff Rd (PruittHealth)	2/8/2024 @ 2:00 pm	Thurs	√
24- 010028	Destructive/damage/vandalism of property	1400 block Oxford Rd (Emory Village)	2/5/2024 @ 12:00 am	Mon	√
24- 009703	Simple assault	700 block Clifton Heights Ln	2/4/2024 @ 12:10 am	Sun	√
24- 009240	Destructive/damage/vandalism of property	1600 block N Decatur Rd (Emory Village)	2/1/2024 @ 7:00 pm	Thurs	√
24- 014025	Theft from motor vehicle	1300 block Normandy Dr	2/1/2024 @ 4:00 pm	Thurs	√
in City of Atlanta: 0
Report compiled by E. Meshnick Sources: crimemapping.com, opendata.atlantapd.org

Chart prepared by G. Tapp

Neighborhood Watch

We believe that neighbors who know each other look out for each other, and that is our most effective method of deterring crime. With Neighborhood Watch, neighbors keep an eye out for one another. To make this work we need street captains (and co-captains for the longer streets). To date, we have 45 street captains!

Street captain responsibilities:

Maintain a contact list for every house on the street and share it with everyone on the list.
Forward monthly crime reports to your list. (It will be sent to you by the Druid Hills Neighborhood Watch Leader, Ellen Meshnick.)
If a crime does occurs, the victim must call the police. Then either email your neighbors or tell the street captain, who will do so.

Note that you don’t have to belong to the Druid Hills Civic Association nor the Druid Hills Patrol. (However, we encourage you to join both. If everyone joins the Patrol, it can extend its hours and its patrol area.)

Join the team!

Public Safety Committee, Doug Rollins, publicsafety@druidhills.org

Neighborhood Watch Leader, Ellen Meshnick, neighborhoodwatch@druidhills.org

The mission of the Druid Hills Patrol is to make Druid Hills safer by employing off-duty police officers to patrol our community and supplement services provided by the police. It is a separate organization from the DHCA. It is a non-profit organization, funded by members and managed by volunteers. The DHCA encourages all neighbors to join. The more members, the more hours can be spent patrolling the neighborhood! Join the patrol today!

PROTECT YOUR PROPERTY

Don't leave anything in your car. Even things that might seem like they aren't of value, may be desirable to someone else! Believe it or not, loose change can be the reason for a broken window.

Please remember to retrieve packages from your doorstep as soon as they are delivered.

Coordinate package security with neighbors by exchanging contact information and agreeing to either move packages to a secure location or take them inside for each other.

Remove mail from your mailbox as soon as possible after delivery.

Report ALL thefts.

Be a good neighbor and keep an eye out for anything unusual.

SEEN DOWNED SIGNS/STREET LIGHTS OUT?

Report street light outages here.

Report downed signs in DeKalb County by emailing Sharon Neal.

PONCE CORRIDOR SAFETY

Ponce de Leon was designed as a part of the original Druid Hills plan by Frederick Law Olmsted to be a meandering, picturesque road showcasing the neighborhood. As Atlanta has grown (and so has the traffic!), it is a very dangerous corridor with frequent traffic accidents and incidents. It also has problems with flooding.

The GDOT has had several stakeholder input meetings as they try to address these issues while working within our neighborhood's historical landmark regulations. We maintain a special web page where we host updates about the "Ponce Corridor" here.

FLOCK Security Camera PILOT PROGRAM

FLOCK cameras were installed in Division 1 as part of a City of Atlanta grant beginning August 20, 2018.
Read about the DHCA Pilot Program

Important update on FLOCK contract (November 2020):

The DHCA wants to ensure all residents are aware of the expiration of the grant used to cover the first two years of our FLOCK camera system. Beginning in February of 2021, those living on Fairview, Lullwater, Oakdale and Springdale will need to pick up the contracting and payment process directly with FLOCK in order to maintain coverage. The current rate is $2,000 per camera/year or $4,000 to cover both ends of a street segment. The organizers of private FLOCK contracts on Cornell and Oxford tell us that the annual cost per resident varies from $88-$120 per year depending on the number of homes.

Read our analysis of FLOCK camera effectiveness.

DHCA SIDEWALK REPAIR PROGRAM

Sick and tired of our sidewalks?

Your DHCA is too!

And we want to do something about them! The first step towards any remediation of our abysmal sidewalks is to understand the size and scope of the problem.We can do this and we desperately need your help. Thanks to COVID 19, we’re all spending a lot more time walking, running, skating and riding up and down our streets.

Send me a quick email with a photo of the worst of the worst. Take a picture, note the specific address of the sidewalk and the side of the street if possible. We believe that neighbors who know each other look out for each other, and that is our most effective method of deterring crime. To that end, we’re going to create an inventory of our sidewalks that we can use to inform fact-based discussions with stakeholders including DeKalb County.

Send your sidewalk pics (with address) to publicsafety@druidhills.org. Spread the word to your friends and neighbors. #safewalk

CONTACT US

DRUID HILLS CIVIC ASSOCIATION
P.O. Box 363, Decatur, GA 30031

mail@druidhills.org
druidhills.org