With the recent spate of fast-food armed robberies, shootings, and a murder during the armed robbery of a convenience store, it is easy to think that big-city crime has edged its way into the small-town atmosphere of the metropolitan region of Valdosta-Lowndes County.

Numerous callers to our Rant & Rave and comments overheard on the street suggest that crime is new to the region, an unfortunate by-product of recent growth. There’s some truth to the sentiment that more people, more growth, means more crime; however, such comments either come from folks who are relatively new to Valdosta-Lowndes County or by people with relatively short memories.

Valdosta-Lowndes County suffered from far more vicious crimes during the late 1980s through mid-1990s. Then, it was not unusual for the Valdosta Police Department and the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department to work a combined total of a dozen-plus murders annually. That was an average of a dozen, usually more, murders per year, each year, for several years running.

Those murders stemmed from armed robberies to domestic disputes to drug deals gone bad to shoot-’em-ups on the streets. They happened in people’s homes, in businesses, on busy streets, both night and day.

These murders gave Valdosta, specifically, a higher per capita murder rate than most cities in Georgia, again, for several years running.

Then about a dozen years ago, the number of Valdosta’s violent armed robberies and murders dropped. There are many potential factors as to why the numbers decreased: the economy improved, better trained regional law-enforcement, more funding for area law-enforcement, a drop in the use of crack cocaine, the increased use of air-conditioning which keeps more people off the streets and other quality-of-life improvements, and, yes, the development which made Valdosta-Lowndes County a metropolitan region. Business and industrial growth mean more opportunities for employment, better wages, and increased quality of life, which can, conversely, lower crime rates from the desperation of armed robberies to the money quarrels of domestic disputes.

As gas prices waver at $3.50 to $4 per gallon, as both the impressions and realities of a slipping economy are realized, as the price of food, services, utilities and other goods increase, as wages stagnate, as companies lay-off workers or initiate hiring freezes, as gang activity grows, crime traditionally increases. Valdosta-Lowndes County is feeling that pinch.

Such conditions should not serve as excuses for violent crimes, but to think economic factors do not play a part in increased crime is dangerously naïve. Almost as naïve as thinking recent violent crimes are something new to Valdosta-Lowndes County.

Rather than profess ignorance of the past, local leaders should look back at the period when Valdosta-Lowndes County’s last crime spree ended, study what factors brought that bloody era to a close, and do all within their power to again implement those lessons now.