JACKSON, MS (Mississippi News Now) -
Last week we interviewed a south Jackson man who was so fed up with his house being burglarized, he says he's going to just let it go for taxes and move to New Mexico.
Our victim, who didn't want his face shown on television, had left his south Jackson house just the way it was after nine burglaries, completely ransacked. Here is a sample of what he told us.
"It's no quality of life. Jackson is going to be a ghost town, I give it five years. It's gonna be vacant, and then what they gonna do," said the victim.
He was not critical of police, saying they had responded within five minutes every time he called them. But, we decided to get a reaction from Assistant Police Chief Lee Vance, who says the situation in south Jackson has actually improved over five or six years ago.
"We do crime prevention, and we have seen some improvement. Commander Jesse Robinson and his staff are doing a very good job down there. Commander Robinson and his people are working very, very hard down there. We have seen some crime numbers go down in Precinct 1. We arrest kids as young as eight years old for burglarizing houses, down there and that goes beyond laws. It goes into family issues," said Assistant Chief Vance.
You can still ride down streets like Greenview Drive and find 17 homes either abandoned or boarded up in one long block. Assistant Chief Vance says five or six years ago there were 25 burglaries a week in this area. Last week it was down to six.
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