Crime on the decline: Overall crime dropped 7% last year

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The number of crimes reported in Hoover in 2025 dropped 7% from the previous year, and the city experienced 19-year lows in burglaries, auto break-ins and thefts of vehicles, police statistics show.

But there were notable increases in counterfeiting and forgery cases and drug offenses in 2025.

Fifty-eight vehicles were reported stolen in Hoover in 2025. That’s two fewer stolen vehicles than in 2024 and down from an average of 94 vehicle thefts per year over the previous 18 years, records show. The highest year in that time period was 2007, when 136 vehicles were reported stolen.

Auto break-ins decreased 11%, from 184 in 2024 to 163 in 2025. The average number of auto break-ins over the previous 18 years was 393, and the high was 530 in 2013, records show.

Burglaries dropped 14% from 70 in 2024 to 60 in 2025. The average number of burglaries over the previous 18 years was 268, and the high was 454 in 2009. Apartment burglaries were down 17%, and burglaries of businesses were down 22%.

“We continue to have a decrease in our crime rate in our city,” new Police Chief Clay Morris said.

Morris attributes the drop in crime to the dedication and tireless work ethic of Hoover police officers to keep the community safe.

“Most cities do not see those types of crime reductions year after year,” Morris said. “It’s a testament to the men and women of the department that keep continuing to be proactive.”

The city’s population grew by about 1,400 residents in 2025, and calls for service increased slightly (less than 1%) to 154,647, Morris said. Arrests were up 20% from 2,826 in 2024 to 3,396 in 2025.

Violent crime is very low for a city the size of Hoover, Morris said.

There were only three homicides in 2025, and they all involved people who knew each other, he said. One involved a 40-year-old man who shot his 55-year-old sister during an argument at a home off Shades Crest Road in March, and another involved a 41-year-old man who shot his 38-year-old wife in their home off Sulphur Springs Road before killing himself in December. The third homicide involved the death of an unborn child after an employee at Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux at Tattersall Park apparently unintentionally shot a pregnant co-worker while recklessly handling his firearm, police said.

Only 10 robberies were reported in Hoover in 2025, compared to a national average that typically falls between 82 to 125 for cities of about 100,000 people.

“That is a staggeringly low number,” Morris said.

Three of Hoover’s 10 robberies were shoplifting incidents that turned into robberies due to the threat of violence, while one was related to a domestic dispute and a fifth was a suspicious robbery in which the victim quit cooperating with police, Morris said.

The Hoover Police Department cleared 80% of its robberies in 2025, compared to a national average of roughly 35%, Morris said.

Assaults were down 17% from 779 in 2024 to 650 in 2025, and domestic violence crimes were down 18% from 579 to 476. But domestic violence is still one of the most common police calls, Morris said.

“Domestic violence — that’s a very difficult issue to tackle from an enforcement perspective,” he said. “People are making decisions, and we have to respond to those decisions. I think we’ve lost our way in common decency in society sometimes. We struggle with talking about anything anymore. We tend to scream, holler and yell and be physical with each other. That’s unfortunate.”

There are some successful programs to help deal with domestic violence, but unfortunately those usually start after an arrest, he said.

Hoover Police Captain Daniel Lowe said every domestic violence victim gets a follow-up phone call in which police refer them to a partner agency to try to help them as much as they can.

Hoover had four kidnappings in 2025, but that was actually just two incidents, each involving two victims, and both were domestic in nature, Morris said. Hoover does not have a problem with kidnappings by strangers, he said.

Among property crimes, thefts were down 16% from 1,195 to 1,004. Among those, shoplifting cases were down 24% from 567 to 433.

Morris attributed the drop in shoplifting to the proactivity of officers, visibility of police in Hoover and successful prosecutions. Lowe added that the Retail Theft Act passed by the Alabama Legislature two years ago also contributed to that decline.

“There are more serious consequences for specific retail theft,” he said. “When you’re in a city like ours that is a heavy retail-based economy, I think that helps us. It gives prosecutors more tools to handle these cases.”

But organized retail theft continues to be a rampant problem across the country, Morris said.

“These are criminal organizations that travel our state and travel multi-state rings,” he said. “They have a process, and they have stores they go to, and they repeatedly target the same stores across multiple states or throughout Alabama.”

It’s also unfortunate that some of the big-box stores are not very cooperative, Morris said.

“Sometimes they won’t call when crime happens,” he said. “They wait for days, and they instruct their employees not to call. That’s not very helpful because we could do so much more and be more proactive and have lower crime rates if some of these big-box retailers would be more cooperative with us. … You’d be surprised.”

DRUG OFFENSES

One of the largest crime categories in Hoover is drug offenses, which increased 11% from 603 in 2024 to 668 in 2025. Almost half of those were marijuana offenses.

While medical marijuana is now legal in Alabama, certain qualifying conditions must be met, such as cancer-related pain or nausea, HIV/AIDS, Crohn’s, Parkinson’s, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, or chronic or persistent nausea. Patients also must obtain a certification from a specially registered physician and register for a medical cannabis card.

Morris questions the need for medical marijuana and said advocacy groups use medical marijuana as a red herring and as a way to eventually make recreational marijuana use legal.

“Marijuana without question is a gateway drug,” Morris said.

In states where marijuana use has been legalized, there has been an increase in emergency room admissions from accidents involving marijuana, increased problems with substance abuse and mental health issues, and billions of dollars in increased health care costs, Morris said. Also, marijuana use absolutely affects the adolescent brain during development stages, he said.

States that have legalized marijuana also still have an extensive black market for it, he said.

It will be interesting to see how the fairly new medical marijuana law in Alabama impacts those types of statistics here, Morris said.

“I think we’re going to be surprised over time,” he said.

More drivers in vehicle crashes in Alabama already are impaired by marijuana more so than alcohol, Lowe said.

It also will be interesting to see the reasons given for medical marijuana prescriptions in Alabama and the crime rates around the marijuana dispensaries that are approved, Morris said. There are no active dispensaries in Hoover, he said.

Congress in 2018 passed the Agriculture Improvement Act, which authorized the production of hemp and removed hemp and hemp seeds from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s schedule of controlled substances.

That 2018 “Farm Bill” led to a lot of products being sold that were not labeled appropriately and that contained very intoxicating substances, sometimes labeled as “gas station weed,” some critics say.

While a state law passed in Alabama last year did require better labeling of products and set limitations on what types of businesses can sell consumable hemp products, it still allows consumable products with 10 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol, often known as THC.

THC is the primary psychoactive cannabinoid found in the cannabis plant and is responsible for the “high” associated with marijuana use. It acts on cannabinoid receptors in the brain, affecting memory, pleasure and coordination, and is used both recreationally and medically.

The state law also required businesses that want to sell consumable hemp products to first get approval from municipalities in which the sales would take place. The Hoover City Council passed a six-month moratorium against such sales that is set to expire in May unless it gets extended.

Morris said THC vape pens are fairly rampant. They’re often labeled one thing but have something else inside them, or their purity levels are too high, he said. Some stores have legal products on the shelves and illegal products underneath the counter, he said.

“There are wholesalers in our area that have warehouses full of products that have been banned from sale,” he said. “They’re not going to sit on those forever.”

There also is a billion-dollar industry in kratom, Morris said. In the United States, kratom is sold as an herbal supplement to boost energy, enhance mood, relieve pain and alleviate opioid withdrawal symptoms. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved kratom for any medical use, and it carries significant risks of addiction, abuse and side effects.

“There is a massive lobbying effort behind kratom to keep it legal,” Morris said. “All of this is about money at the end of the day. … They want to keep people struggling with addiction. It’s all greed.

“Hoover is not immune to the drug problem,” Morris said. “No city is. That doesn’t mean we have a bad problem. We’re no different than any city our size in the country. At some point, drug use is a moral decision. We can’t regulate moral decisions, so what do we do? We focus our efforts on supply. You have to keep supply in check.”

There really should be a war on addiction, Morris said. “If we solve addiction, we solve drugs because drug distribution is simple economics. If there is a demand, there will be a supply — always and forever. And if there is not a demand, there won’t be a supply.”

It’s also important to remember that the vast majority of crimes in some way are tied to drug usage, abuse, distribution or addiction, he said.

SCAMS

Hoover, like the rest of the country, also is dealing with a proliferation of scams, Morris said. Forgeries and counterfeit crimes were up 41% from 69 in 2024 to 97 in 2025.

There are multiple types of scams. Some are related to cryptocurrency, while others deal with vehicle and property taxes or fake warrants for arrest that individuals supposedly can evade by paying a fine, Morris said. Some of these scams are very creative and convincing, and some of the newer ones are instructing people to put money in bitcoin ATMs, he said. Some people will deposit thousands of dollars into these machines, he said.

“We continue to educate the public on these scams, and people still fall victim,” Morris said. “They have your data, and they’re exploiting your own data against you. … The police are not going to call you if they have a warrant, and don’t put your money in a bitcoin ATM.”