The latest uniform crime statistics show Leon County has one of the highest per capita crime rates in the state. But, Chief of Police Michael DeLeo says while Tallahassee’s numbers aren’t what he’d like them to be, statistics don’t show the whole picture. He points to a recent drug arrest.
“That was a misdemeanor arrest for marijuana. Officers saw some suspicious people. They went over and investigated. The K-9 alerted on the car for drugs and the search uncovered two assault rifles and ski masks and gloves. That police work will never show up in a uniform crime report,” DeLeo says.
DeLeo says he’s confident his officers stopped a much bigger crime from taking place that day. He says rather than comparing crime rates from county to county, it makes more sense for counties to compare their previous year’s crime rates to the current year. Tallahassee saw a drop in violent crime between 2015 and 2016. Early numbers indicate an increase again in 2017, but DeLeo says that’s based on a small timeframe.
