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As police officer Mike Fisher drives through Germantown, he occasionally taps away on the laptop mounted in the front seat of his squad car. When he calls up information, the computer makes a noise like a gunshot ricochet.

Fisher, 36, hears this simulated sound dozens of times each day. In reality, he has only had one situation here requiring him to fire his gun in the line of duty.

“I had to put down a deer hit by two cars,” the officer says. “I caught hell over having to shoot him four times.”

Germantown, perhaps even more than other suburbs, stands in dramatic contrast to Memphis. While Memphis ranked as the nation’s second-most-violent city in the FBI’s 2005 crime statistics, and Memphis began 2007 with 14 murders in January, Germantown seems to mostly live up to a sign posted in the police department lobby:

“Serving the Safest City in the South.”

Yet even Germantown, which hasn’t had a homicide in more than three years - “knock on wood, I don’t want to jinx us,” says Germantown Police Chief Richard Hall - does not go untouched by crime.

Remember the Hacks Cross Creeper? A man who was thought to be responsible was recently convicted on two counts of aggravated burglary, robbery and aggravated rape in connection with two 2003 cases in Germantown. He’s suspected of many more crimes in the area.

“Everybody wanted to catch him,” Fisher says, recalling the days and nights when the Creeper was still out there, lurking. “That was the most you could hope for on a shift at that time - to catch the Creeper.”

In the big picture, crime does not color within the lines. Criminals honor no laws and observe no borders.

“We’re next to Memphis, which is recognized … as one of the most dangerous cities in the country,” says Collierville Police Chief Larry Goodwin, 60, who spent 26 years with the Memphis Police Department. “Obviously, we’re going to get spillover.”

Olive Branch is a neighbor of Memphis, too, and spillover also results from intensified policing efforts.

“Memphis’ Operation Blue Crush is causing us problems,” says Olive Branch Major Todd Fullwood, “causing criminals to come down here.”

The crime game

“There is a spillover,” says Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald. “Not just from Memphis, but from any urban center. People who are impoverished feel a low sense of hope and turn to other forms of making money.”

The suburbs, then, offer bounty.

“We’re a target-rich environment because the economic status is a little higher here than in some places,” says Fullwood.

“I urge citizens that even though we live in a relatively safe community, do not let your guard down,” says Collierville’s Goodwin, adding that police leave behind a flyer warning homeowners of an increased risk of crime whenever they see a garage door up and the garage unattended.

“We’re a target-rich environment because the economic status is a little higher here than in some places.”

Major Todd Fullwood
Olive Branch P.D.

Burglaries of homes, businesses and, most of all, cars, are more common in the suburbs than armed robbery or aggravated assaults. But that doesn’t make fighting this crime easy.

“Crime changes daily,” says Inspector Ray Douglas, commander at MPD’s Appling Farms Station, formerly the northeast precinct, which includes much of Cordova. “It’s kind of like a chess match. They make a move; we make a reactive move. We make a proactive move; they move out of the precinct.”

Burglars are prime opportunists. Citizens are all too often careless.

Bad combination.

“People leave all kinds of stuff in their cars,” says Inspector Mark Dunbar of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department.

Douglas agrees: “Laptop computers, money, pistols … you name it, and they leave it in their cars.”

Parking lots - be they in apartment complexes or outside restaurants, shops or health clubs - are hot spots. Shelby Farms parking lots were favored targets for a while, too. And an auto burglary in a neighborhood is more likely when a car is parked on the street.

“We’ve also had instances where people leave their garage doors open at night - for whatever reason - and people go into the garages and go through the cars,” Dunbar says. “Our main emphasis is getting into the neighborhoods and seeing if we can flesh these guys out.”

Peak burglary time, says Dunbar, is from 7 a.m.. to noon: “They’re up and watching when you back out of the driveway to go to work. Alarms do help. When they kick the door and that audible alarm goes off, they don’t finish the job. They’re gone.”

But that doesn’t mean they won’t be back or that they won’t look for the next great opportunity. Like Douglas says, it’s a chess match.

“They know when vacation season starts,” says Dunbar. “It increases their efforts and ours as well.”

Proactive, not reactive

If suburban police were football coaches, they would speak of running blitzes - aggressive, targeted policing - while maintaining their prevent defense - a high-profile visible presence that in and of itself acts as a deterrent.

“The statistics nationwide cite the probability of people who violate traffic laws violating other laws as well,” says Goodwin of Collierville. “Our goal is the minute you enter our city, you see a police car.”

As a mathematical equation: visible presence plus active enforcement equals greater compliance.

“Even when I was a kid, you knew not to speed in Germantown,” says officer Fisher.

This doesn’t mean it’s all about writing tickets. It’s not. Germantown issued 8,649 tickets in 2006 just from the two intersections equipped with cameras; officers also wrote 2,854 warning citations last year.

Often, a traffic stop is not designed for the officer to write a ticket as much as it is ensure the public’s safety. Germantown’s Chief Hall says a “career criminal” is more likely to drive a car in disrepair, without proper tags, and perhaps drive on a suspended license. So if a car doesn’t look right, he prefers his officers to err on the side of caution: Stop the car and check it out.

“It’s a very valid reputation,” Hall says of the notion that motorists are more likely to be stopped in Germantown. “I don’t think we’re unmerciful.”

Bartlett Assistant Chief Gary Rikard points to the city’s “zero tolerance” of traffic infractions and a recent arrest report showing a suspect had been stopped for not wearing a seatbelt.

Turns out, the man recently had been released from prison. He had a history of robbing and burglarizing. And here he was driving on a suspended license at 11 p.m. on a quiet weeknight in Bartlett.

Was he just passing through?

Or was he looking for an opportunity to ply his old trade?

“That’s the kind of person we have going through our city,” Rikard says. “Maybe he got rehabilitated in prison. Probably, he was up to no good.”

Anytime, anywhere

Every jurisdiction has its challenges.

In Bartlett, police focus on the busy Stage Road corridor. In Millington, U.S. 51 has become a competitive rush-hour super speedway filled with commuters.

“Sometimes, traffic won’t let you go after somebody, and you can have the blue lights on and everything,” says Millington Lt. Steve White.

Further north, the Tipton County Sheriff’s Department has too many miles to cover, not enough manpower, and more crime from an ever-growing population.

“We’re experiencing a lot of growing pains out here,” Sheriff J.T. “Pancho” Chumley says, noting the county’s population is up to around 60,000. “And as we grow, so does crime.”

That’s the reality just about everywhere, even as memories from simpler times remain.

Major Fullwood, 36, graduated Olive Branch High School. He remembers when traffic was never a problem, when the world was no bigger than Friday night lights, cheerleaders and a slushy.

“Hacks Cross was a two-lane country road, there wasn’t any bypass, and Sonic was it, the place to go,” he says.

Michael Layson, an officer in Olive Branch, believes some residents are coming to understand that their community is changing.
“They’re starting to get it,” he says.

Others …

“A lot of them think they’re still living in small-town Olive Branch,” the officer says, smiling. “And that’s how we want to keep it. But nowadays, you can’t leave your doors unlocked.”

And if you’re a police officer working outside the Big Town, you have to keep your eyes open to the improbable. That next alarm call might not be false, but real.

You have to keep your mind open to the unimaginable - like last year’s wee-hours shootout in Cordova with an apparently disturbed U.S. deputy marshal, or the hostage situation outside a Bartlett restaurant that resulted in the suspect killing himself.

Anything can happen, anytime, anywhere.

“When you work in an environment like this, where it’s slower, you have to be careful not to get complacent,” Germantown’s Mike Fisher says as his laptop lets loose another gunshot ricochet. “Because bad things certainly can happen here.”

Don Wade: 529-2358
dwade@commercialappeal.com