Arrest Data
The Official Code of Georgia Annotated (O.C.G.A.) defines crimes as either:
FELONY "means a crime punishible by death, imprisonment for life, or by imprisonment for more than 12 months." (O.C.G.A. § 16-3-1)
MISDEMEANOR "mean[s] any crime other than a felony" and includes "misdemeanor[s] of a high and aggravated nature." (O.C.G.A. § 16-3-1)
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Arrest types are classified according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) guidelines, which define:
ON-VIEW ARREST is an apprehension without a warrant or a previous incident report. 642 BPD arrests in 2020 were "on-view" arrests (28%)
TAKEN INTO CUSTODY is a custodial arrest based upon an existing warrant or a previously submitted incident report. 724 BPD arrests in 2020 were "taken into custody" arrests (32%)
SUMMONED/CITED means that an offender was NOT taken into custody and, was instead released with a summons to appear in court at a later time. 915 BPD arrests in 2020 were "Summoned/Cited" arrests (40%)
The charts below describe 2020 arrests by BPD in terms of residency, ethnicity, race, age, and sex.
*Total arrests and arrest types refer to the literal number of persons arrested. Misdemeanor and Felony Charges represent the number of misdemeanor or number of felony charges filed. Because some arrestees are charged with more than one offense, the number of charges exceeds the total number of persons arrested.
*Residency refers to whether a person resides within the City limits of Brookhaven irrespective of immigration or United States citizenship status.
*Notably, 70% of those persons against whom force was presented or used were not residents of Brookhaven. This makes the use of force demographic data incomparable with Brookhaven demographic and census data.
*The Federal Bureau of Investigation, like the U.S. Census Bureau and all Federal agencies, must adhere to the 1997 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards on race and ethnicity. In turn, the Brookhaven Police Department follows the FBI / OMB standard which provides five minimum categories for RACE: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian. See: https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html
ETHNICITY is collected separately from Race, and is defined by OMB as either "Hispanic or Latino" or "Not Hispanic or Latino." OMB Defines "Hispanic or Latino" as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. People who identify as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race. See: https://www2.census.gov/about/training-workshops/2020/2020-02-19-pop-pre...
Recognizing that the OMB and other Federal reporting guidelines are not consistent with the way that many Hispanic/Latino persons identify (see, e.g.: https://www.prb.org/changing-race-and-ethnicity-questions-on-the-u-s-cen...), this chart merges the Race and Ethnicity data in an attempt to most accurately and holistically represent this information. In 2020, BPD arrested 837 persons who identified as Hispanic/Latino. Of those, 827 (98.7%) were classified as "White" and 10 (1.2%) were classified as "Black." This graph removes those 837 persons from the White and Black race categories, and instead here presents them as Hispanic, All Races.
*SEX is recorded based on the biological sex of an arrestee irrespective of gender identity.
