InTucker Magazine

On the Beat with Lt. Schoeppner – July 2019

Lt. D.G. Schoeppner is Tucker’s liaison to the DeKalb County Police Department and can be followed at facebook.com/dgschoeppner or emailed at dgschoeppner@dekalbcountyga.gov.

One of my main responsibilities as the Tucker Liaison Officer is to brief the Mayor and City Council on crime trends. Crime is continuously going up and down and moving from one area to another. Quite often there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I usually compare pinpointing crime trends to looking at the inside of a clock. There are so many moving parts that it is not always easy to see how one affects the other. However, once in a while a situation presents itself where you can clearly see the effect of how taking certain criminals off the street can directly impact crime. One such instance occurred last year.

By the end of April 2018, the City had 121 entering autos complaints. This was 16 more incidents than the same time the year before. Around that time, there was a burglary at Landmark Dodge over in the City of Chamblee. Thirty-three cars were stolen in this particular incident. On May 6, 2018 a seven-year-old boy was murdered on Sweetgum Lane in DeKalb County’s Center Precinct. When it was all said and done, all of these crimes turned out to be connected.

Meshon Williams was arrested for the murder on Sweetgum Lane. In the subsequent weeks, six other subjects were arrested in connection with the cars stolen from Landmark Dodge. Mr. Williams was significant because he was captured on video committing several entering autos near Sarr Parkway here in Tucker. The investigation of the stolen Landmark Dodge vehicles also revealed that Meshon Williams was associated with the subjects arrested with the stolen vehicles.

After the arrests from these incidents, Tucker ended last year with 272 entering autos complaints. This was 95 fewer incidents and a 26 percent decrease from the year before. I’m sure that the arrest of Williams and his associates wasn’t the sole reason for the entering autos decrease last year, but with the upward trend leading up to the arrests and the steep decline after, I’m confident that it was a significant factor.

This is a clear example of arrests from crimes around DeKalb County impacting Tucker. I’m sure that, to some degree, this is happening all of the time. It is also likely that arrests that we are making here are impacting crime in other agencies as well. Tucker tries to maintain a small-town feel, but it is not an island. It is part of a large metropolitan city. As such, we need to work together to stave off big city crime.