Starkville saw significantly more thefts, robberies, assaults and burglaries in 2014 than in 2013, and Starkville Police Chief Frank Nichols attributes this in part  to Starkville’s population increase during MSU’s athletic success. 
The Starkville Municipal Court gave a report last week of the city’s criminal case statistics for 2014. The report showed that while the amount of cases have increased across the board, misdemeanor and felonious theft cases increased the most drastically. 
“Last year we started averaging about 107 extra calls each month than we did in 2013,” Nichols said. “I expect that to continue to go up as enrollment goes up at the university. There is a direct correlation between high enrollment and traffic offenses and crime in the city.”
MSUPD also had to deal with an increase in automobile thefts. In 2013, there were seven reported instances of motor vehicle theft. In 2014, the city experienced  13 auto thefts, only two of which happened outside of the football season. Auto thefts were not the only issues MSUPD dealt with last year.
“We’ve never had an armed robbery in the middle of a game before. We did this year,” MSUPD Chief Vance Rice said. 
While enrollment for MSU has remained about the same for the past four years, the success of its athletic program is unprecedented, and the full effects of last year’s football season remain to be seen.
However, one thing that is for certain is Starkville’s growth is closely tied with MSU’s as more students attending the university means more students living off campus in the city, as well as potential jobs for professors and supporting staff. 
“We’ve had an increase in traffic offenses, we’ve had an increase in DUIs, an increase in misdemeanors. So everything went up,” Nichols said. 
Nichols said the national average for police departments is about 2.5 officers for every 1,000 citizens. SPD is about 10 officers short of that mark, according to the 2013 census. 
“However, that’s not even counting the students,” Nichols said. “We have 55 sworn officers here. We should have 65 as per the census, but in all actuality, with the students living here, we should be at about 75. We are definitely short when it comes to manpower.”
Nichols has served SPD for nearly 23 years, and said in that time frame the amount of officers on patrol has not increased significantly, even though there are twice as many apartment complexes now than there were in  the early ‘90s. 
That is not to say that SPD has not expanded, just that the patrol division has remained the same. Nichols said about 10 years ago a narcotics unit was created along with a traffic unit to deal with an increase in DUI’s as well as a community oriented police unit. 
Nichols said the narcotics unit presented about 100 cases to the Grand Jury last year alone. 
“When I was hired, we had about 45 officers and now we have about 55. Though we’ve increased by 10, they had to go to other places besides patrol,” Nichols said. “So now it’s time to get patrol fattened up.”
Rice said MSUPD is about where it needs to be as far as manpower is concerned. Even though with 35 officers to 20,138 students, MSUPD is technically behind the national average. Rice’s only concerns revolve around events like game days when a large number of people from out of town flood campus.
The Starkville Municipal Court’s report also showed an increase in probation violations, which made up 30 percent of the total misdemeanor cases. Nichols said this is because the Mississippi Department of Corrections has started to release a lot more inmates who were serving time for nonviolent crimes.