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Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
One of the new Hoover Police Department patrol vehicles at the Frank and Pam Barefield Training Center. The department’s new vehicles include new branding.
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Photos courtesy of Hoover Police.
Home security images show suspects attempting to break into vehicles in residential areas in Hoover. Photos courtesy of Hoover Police.
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Photos courtesy of Hoover Police.
Home security images show suspects attempting to break into vehicles in residential areas in Hoover.
For the first time in 12 years, Hoover in 2023 went a full calendar year without a homicide unrelated to traffic, Hoover police said.
2023 turned out to be good on several fronts related to crime levels. There were only nine robberies the entire year, the lowest number in 23 years and a 40% drop from 15 robberies in 2022, police statistics show.
“That’s pretty outstanding,” police Chief Nick Derzis said.
Sex offenses and burglaries were down 15%, thefts were down 14% and auto burglaries were down 12% from 2022, records show. The number of burglaries (99) was the lowest in 17 years, and the number of auto burglaries (317) was the lowest in nine years, which is “pretty strong,” Derzis said.
Total offenses in the major crime categories reported to the U.S. Department of Justice declined by 8%, from 4,184 to 3,842.
Derzis said he was very pleased with 2023’s numbers, and he complimented Capt. Keith Czeskleba and his patrol officers for the work they do.
“We know that seeing police cars and being out doing what we’re paid to do is certainly a deterrent to crime,” Derzis said. “They do a magnificent job of working and, I think, take it personally when people from Hoover or other areas try to come here and commit a crime; they do everything they can to stop it. I would also echo that to the detective side. If somebody is able to commit one, our detectives do a really fantastic job in solving it.”
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Homicides and robberies
The average number of homicides for Hoover is about three per year, but the last time there were zero homicides (other than one related to a traffic incident) was 2011, Derzis said.
There were two deaths on Oct. 31 that were ruled homicides, after a head-on collision on John Hawkins Parkway near Hunter Street Baptist Church. A woman driving a Lexus crashed into a Nissan Rogue, and the two occupants of the Rogue, 67-year-old George Roberts and 64-year-old Teresa Roberts of Bessemer, died on the scene.
The driver of the Lexus, 34-year-old Sarah Rose Tisdale, was determined to be under the influence of multiple controlled substances at the time of the crash. The case was presented to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office in Bessemer, and Tisdale was charged with two counts of murder and one count of reckless endangerment, which was related to the 3-year-old child who was in her vehicle and suffered only minor injuries.
The national homicide rate per 100,000 people in 2022 (the most recent year available) was 6.3 homicides per year, according to Statista. Hoover’s population estimate as of July 2022 was 92,435, according to the Alabama State Data Center.
The national robbery rate was 66 robberies per 100,000 people, according to Statista, so Hoover’s nine robberies in 2023 were far below that average. The average number of robberies in Hoover over the past nine years is 29, records show.
Of Hoover’s nine robberies last year, one was a bank robbery, two were shoplifting incidents that turned into robberies, and six were robberies of people who were involved in illegal or morally questionable activities that contributed to the crime, police Lt. Daniel Lowe said.
“Sometimes your choice of who your friends are can determine your future, and people that were hanging out with folks and involved in things that they shouldn’t have been led to some of those [robberies],” Lowe said.
Seven of Hoover’s nine robberies from 2023 had been solved as of late January — a 78% clearance rate, and all of them probably will end up being solved, Derzis said. Nationally, only 23% of robberies were cleared in 2022, according to Statista.
“I think our police department is committed to excellence, and we know that our good work will continue in 2024, and our promise to our citizens is that we will not waver from our public safety mission, which is to keep our citizens safe.”
Crime fighting tools
Derzis also complimented the work of Detective Brian Hale, who manages the department’s social media accounts and quickly posts about incidents to get help from the public in solving crimes.
The Hoover Police Department’s Facebook page has 101,000 followers. “We reach a lot of folks,” Derzis said. “That’s very, very important, especially when we have something when we have something where we want to potentially get help. We reach a lot of people, and we get a significant amount of help when we post things.”
One reason burglaries may be down is because there are so many doorbell cameras and other types of security cameras in use now, Derzis said. Police in recent years have had access to security footage they didn’t previously have, he said.
Czeskleba noted that more people work from home these days as well, rather than being gone for long periods of time. That puts more eyes in neighborhoods.
Derzis and Czeskleba both said they also believe the department’s “9 p.m. routine” campaign called “Lock It or Lose It,” which was launched in March 2022, has been a successful crime fighting tool.
The campaign encourages residents, at 9 p.m. each night, to make sure they remove guns and other valuables from their outdoor vehicles, lock their vehicles and turn on floodlights. The number of guns stolen from vehicles in 2022 dropped by more than 50% from the 113 guns stolen in 2021, police said. That statistic for 2023 was not yet available.
Thefts of vehicles themselves increased slightly (6.5%) from 92 in 2022 to 98 in 2023, but those numbers have been in the same general range during the last five or six years, Derzis said.
The biggest thing police want to emphasize regarding theft of vehicles and items inside them is the importance of simply locking vehicle doors and taking your keys inside with you.
“People leave their car keys in the vehicle with the vehicle unlocked,” Czeskleba said. “If we can get folks to not only remember to take in their valuables and their firearms, but take your keys with you, too. Do things to help prevent yourself from becoming a victim of crime.”
Lowe noted that on Oct. 17, five vehicles were broken into in two areas of the city, and three of them had the keys left inside. On another day, three vehicles stolen from one apartment complex had keys in them, he said.
Derzis also emphasized that security cameras frequently show locked vehicle doors being a good deterrent to criminals. Thieves check the door handle, and if it’s locked, they usually move on, he said. They usually don’t want to break the windows for fear of setting off an alarm, he said.
Fraud offenses were down 7% from 2022. Lowe said that, hopefully, people are paying more attention to the scam alerts, though some people still fall prey to pop-up computer ads that thieves use to steal personal information or phone calls that request money or gift cards to settle a debt or arrest warrant against the victim or a family member.
No law enforcement agency or governmental agency is going to call you and ask you to get gift cards or pay for a fine in cryptocurrency, Derzis and Lowe said.
Weapons violations were down 72%, from 72 in 2022 to 20 in 2023, but that’s just because of a change in the law, Czeskleba said. “There are not less guns out there. It is just no longer against the law to carry a gun without a permit,” he said.
One other crime category that did increase is drug offenses. There were 721 drug offenses recorded in 2023, an 11% increase from 650 drug offenses in 2022. Forty-five percent of those (324) were marijuana offenses, and another 30% (215) were drug equipment violations.
Czeskleba said he doesn’t know that marijuana is more prevalent than before. “I just think our guys are doing a better job of finding it and making traffic stops and making those contacts where you do find somebody that has it on them,” he said.
Even though the total number of criminal offenses dropped 8% in 2023, Hoover officers had a record number of warrants signed in 2023 (1,129), Lowe said. That’s up 6% from 2022.
“In a year where you had lower violent crime stats and lower things like that, we’re still solving more cases than we ever have,” Lowe said. “I think that shows not only the deterrent that patrol plays, but when we do have bad things that happen, we’re going to put the bad guy in jail. If you come to Hoover to do that, we’re going to throw everything we can at you to make sure that the crimes get solved.”
