As Foley Police Chief David Wilson watched the moon pie drop in Mobile on New Year’s Eve he had more to celebrate than the beginning of a new year.

After midnight struck and the moon pie dropped, Wilson realized Foley had made it through an entire year without a single homicide. According to Wilson, Foley has not had a year without a homicide in recent years.

The realization struck Wilson with a sense of joy and pride, especially when he factors in Foley’s crime rate has been cut in half in just the four years since he has been in charge of the Foley Police Department.

“There were no homicides in 2010. When me and my wife were watching TV on December 31. I am telling you, when that moon pie hit the ground I turned to my wife, and I said “Yes!” and she said, “I know, honey, no homicides.” It was great. That was a biggie, no homicides in 2010. I am very pleased with that. We had two at the end of 2008 and two at the start of the year in 2009. Calendar-wise that was four in a year, and then none in 2010. We hope that is a trend we can continue,” Wilson said.

Wilson also reported that the police department’s efforts have resulted in an overall lower crime rate in Foley over the past few years. In 2007, Wilson said there were 3,375 crimes in Foley. In 2010 there were only 1,672 crimes in Foley. In four years, the police department has been able to cut out half of the crime in Foley. Wilson also compared the Part 1 offenses in Foley since 2006 with neighboring municipalities of similar size. The data includes homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, larceny, motor vehicle thefts and arson.

“One thing I am real proud of…for cities between 10,000 and 20,000 in population here in Baldwin County they show Daphne, Foley, Gulf Shores and Fairhope in the same category. In 2006, our crime rate was through the ceiling. It was through the ceiling in 2007 too…You can see the other cities see good drops too, but you can pretty much see this is 400-600 range,” he said.

Wilson was also amazed that despite the hard year people have been hit with the police department managed to keep the crime rate in Foley from increasing, and there was even a noticeable decrease in total crimes for 2010.

“(In) overall crime Foley saw a 7 percent decrease this past year. I was still pleased to have a drop because 2010 has been a doozey with everything going on,” said Wilson.

Wilson could not be certain what kind of impact a bad economy and the oil spill had on crime, but he thought there would be an increase in crime instead of a decrease because of the added stress.

“I know that it has effected the whole area and I know we have experienced more people under stress and especially we have experienced domestic disturbances is through the ceiling. I can’t sit here and tell you that a large amount of those domestic disturbances relate back to the oil spill, but I do know that in 2010 it has been a challenging year for everybody. The economy has been hurting for a while and then we had the oil spill, so you add that on top of that and I am sure some folks out there turned to crime. How many exactly, I don’t know. I am just pleased. We really stayed after it pretty hard,” he said.

Wilson contributes a lot of the police department’s success to the support the department has received from the city. In 2007, the city council made a commitment and a large investment in the police department as part of an effort to lower crime.

“They brought in more police officers, we got new police cars for those 16 new police officers and they raised the starting pay. That really helped us out a lot. For four years we have been recruiting and restructuring the police department to include patrol districts that best suited the layout of Foley,” Wilson said. “We could not have lowered crime to this degree without the city’s support.”

The police department also added more detectives, which also lowered crime according to Wilson.

“We have added more detectives. That has been a contributor also, because if you have only got a handful of detectives that are trying to solve a lot of unsolved crimes they are just overloaded and they can’t give their best on every case. They can only work towards the big ones, the more serious crimes. Even on the less serious crimes, you still have victims. We enlarged the detective division and allowed them to be able to focus on all the crimes that are reported to them. They have had a higher success rate because there are more detectives and they can give more attention to each crime that is assigned to them so when you are locking up criminals through successful investigations it makes a difference,” he said.

Wilson also said the police department has made a point to only hire the best police officers. He joked it is quite difficult to get on with the Foley Police Department.

The Foley Police Department has also been making strides towards preventing crimes before they happen, including getting drug dealers off the streets and following up on domestic disturbances to ensure a disturbance doesn’t later escalate to violence.

“One thing that we have really stepped up for quite a while now is domestic violence follow-ups,” said Wilson. “If it is domestic violence on the scene when we get there we make an arrest. If it is just a domestic disturbance we still do a follow up on that later on to see if there is anything we can do to help. We may refer them to someone and basically just do our best to break the cycle of violence. We want to help them out before they get to any violence and in the worst case scenario we are trying to head off any homicides.”

“Another thing we did as soon as we had enough officers to allow us to do this, we started going after the drug dealers on the street level.You will see, anytime in a city when you start lowering drug crimes and drug use generally the other crimes will lower with it. We have seen that,” he said.

Wilson said he is determined to continue lowering the crime rate in Foley to make the city a safer place to live and a safer place to visit.

“My goal is the continued lowering of crime in Foley, as you can tell from this crime index graph in 2006 and 2007 in comparison to other cities of our size, Foley in some cases was two, almost three times the crime rate of some of the other cities. In 2009 we have gotten into the ballpark with the other cities of our size. We are going to stay the course that has proven to be successful over the past four years,” said Wilson.