SUMMARY: Holmes County, Fla., was the only agency where complete crime statistics were available. The statistics for Holmes County Florida revealed no decreases in crime from one year to the next while Ingram worked for the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office. Statistics from the other agencies where Ingram worked were either unavailable or incomplete.
ANALYSIS: According to Ingram, he worked at four agencies over the past 12 years as the second officer in charge.
Ingram said he worked at the Villa Rica Police Department in Georgia from 1998 to 2003. According to Willene White-Smith with the Georgia Crime Information Center, statistics for the Villa Rica Police De-partment were only available from 2007 to 2010.
Ingram said he next served as the chief deputy for the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office in Florida from 2003 to 2005. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement website, the crime rate for Holmes County dropped 2.3 percent from 2002 to the first year Ingram served there in 2003. According to the website, there was no increase or decrease in crime rate for the 2003 to 2004 time span. But the website showed a 2.8 increase in crime from 2004 to 2005 in Holmes County, which included an increase of 20 aggravated assaults, and a decrease of burglaries by 16. The website also said there was an 11.5 percent decrease in crime the year after Ingram left the agency. The website said forcible rapes and bur-glaries increased in the years after Ingram left, and the number of aggravated assaults decreased after Ingram left the agency in 2006, from 65 to 40.
Ingram said he worked as the chief deputy with the Barbour County Sheriff’s Office from January 2007 to January 2009.
Carol Roberts, a statistician for the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center, the state agency that accumulates crime statistics, said the crime report numbers were not turned in to them for 2007. The crime report numbers for 2008 only covered nine months of the year -- for some unexplained reason. Barbour County Sheriff LeRoy Upshaw said he thought the statistics had already been turned in at least for 2007.
The Barbour County statistics from the state Criminal Justice Information Center website show there was a decrease in assaults and burglaries by about 30 percent from 2008 to 2009, but that is using only partial numbers for 2008. The website also shows there was an increase in reported rapes for Barbour County from one through nine months in 2008 to five for all of 2009.
Ingram said he worked as the chief deputy for the Quitman Sheriff’s Office in Georgia from the end of January 2009 to the spring of 2010 when he resigned to run for Houston County sheriff. According to the Georgia Crime Information Center’s website, there were 42 reported crimes through the first six months of 2009, which were the only statistics available that year. In comparison, there were only five total crimes reported to the agency for 2008, which were all assaults. Willene White-Smith with the Georgia Crime In-formation Center said a major difference in crime reports could mean the agency had a computer soft-ware problem.
