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2018 Memorial Day weekend crime statistics show great improvement

Attached (below) are the law enforcement statistics for the 2018 Memorial Day weekend, which confirm that this was one of the safest Memorial Day weekends in many years.  Nearly every type and category of criminal activity was down from previous years. 

“As we hoped and expected, the 2018 Memorial Day weekend safety plan resulted in fewer overall crimes during the four-day period,” Police Chief Amy Prock said.  “The community’s extra efforts, including the traffic and pedestrian safety plans, worked extremely well.  Our goal is public safety, not just for this event, but year-round,” she added. 

The statistics are grouped into four sections:  Safety, Quality of Life, Criminal Activity and Interdiction Efforts.  The first three showed overall declines ranging from eight to 21 percent.  The third group, which measures the Police Department’s effectiveness, showed an increase of 69 percent. 

“The Myrtle Beach Police Department and the many law enforcement agencies which assisted our officers are to be thanked and congratulated on this year’s improvements,” Mayor Brenda Bethune said.  “We still had issues, to be sure – a single crime is too much – but anyone looking at these statistics will see that the safety plans worked.” 

City Manager John Pedersen echoed the compliments.  “Citizen complaints were down, noise complaints were down and damages to city property were down,” Pedersen said.  “And most of the crimes which we did see were in single digits.  These statistics speak directly to the effectiveness of the safety measures we put in place.”

Based on these positive results for 2018, the City of Myrtle Beach anticipates using the same traffic and pedestrian safety plans again in 2019.

Memorial Day Weekend Statistics 2011-2018