Violent Attacks in Midtown on the Rise

Sign up for the Midtown Patch newsletter!

---

Atlanta police are stepping up their presence in Midtown after the incidence of crime continues to increase in the area.

According to WSB-TV, two people walking from Caribou Coffee to a bar on Ponce de Leon Avenue were attacked and robbed at gunpoint by two men. The victims told WSB-TV that they readily surrendered their wallets and phones to the robbers but were beaten up anyway.

The attack is one of many that has beleaguered the neighborhood since May; that month, Atlanta police said Midtown had seen the city’s largest uptick in crime.

According to the department’s crime report for Week 20 (May 10-16), the number of rapes reported in Midtown’s Zone 5 so far this year was 160 percent higher than the number of rapes reported up until Week 20 of 2014. Furthermore, there was a 61 percent increase in aggravated assault reports from Weeks 1-20 of 2014. During the 28 days prior to the report, the number of car thefts increased 104 percent from the same 28 day set in 2014, according to the report.

The Midtown Ponce Security Alliance, a neighborhood watch group, reported several robberies and burglaries in May, with a burglary on May 2, two robberies on May 4, a further robbery on May 5, a burglary on May 13, and a further burglary on May 14.

On May 2, a man who may be using meth was caught outside a home on Penn Avenue attempting to walk away with items he had just stolen out of that house; on May 4, a student dropped his bookbag for armed robbers after one of the suspects told his partners to “waste” the student for noncompliance; on May 5, the wife of the owner of a laundromat was struck with a handgun during the course of an armed robbery of the business.