NATCHEZ — When Adams County Sheriff Ronny Brown looks back on his childhood in Natchez, he remembers a city in which people didn’t lock their doors at night.

Today Brown wants those living in the city and the county to have a safe place they can call home.

“I want this to be like a Mayberry,” Brown said of the television city watched over by Sheriff Andy Griffith.

While Brown knows Mayberry isn’t a reality, he’s still striving for it. And the proof is in the numbers.

Since 2000, aggravated assault, robbery, petit and grand larceny, burglary and murder have all declined.

From 2000 aggravated assaults have dropped from 41 to 34, petit larceny has gone from 190 to 158, grand larceny fell from 154 to 142, burglaries fell from 248 to 189 and murders fell from two to just one.

By summer, the Adams County Sheriff’s office will have four new fulltime deputies patrolling the county to keep those numbers down.

The only rise in major crimes was seen in vehicle theft and rape.

Vehicle thefts rose from nine in 2000 to 11 in 2008 and incidents of rape climbed from 13 to 14. And while rape was up in 2008 it was down from 2006 and 2007.

In both of those years the sheriff’s office investigated 15 rape cases.

While Brown said he’s pleased with the overall crime stats, getting those stats isn’t always cut and dry at the Adams County Sheriff’s Office.

In trying to get crime stats in the years before he took office, Brown faced a unique challenge.

Brown said when he became sheriff in 2004 the previous sheriff, Tommy Ferrell, erased all the crime stats he’d been amassing when he left office.

“Everything was deleted,” Brown said. “It was just gone.”

However Ferrell said the records were not deleted when he left office.

“Everything was left,” he said.

Regardless, Brown and his deputies were faced with the daunting task of going back, staring in the year 2000, to manually count and categorize the incident reports.

And since the ACSO logs its incidents and crimes in more than 70 categories — it was no easy task.

“It took us a while,” Brown said.

The logging of some of the ACSO’s calls is a second consideration that must be accounted for in examining Brown’s crime numbers.

Brown said he feels a responsibility to help anyone that calls his office for help — even if they are located in the city limits, where the Natchez Police typically cover calls.

“If you live on Main Street, and someone breaks into your house, and you want to call the sheriff’s office for help we’ll be out there,” Brown said.

But when Brown’s deputies respond to that call, within the city limits, it’s not logged on the city’s crime report.

Incidents when residents call the ACSO instead of the NPD aren’t rare either.

Brown estimates at least 23 percent of calls coming into the sheriff’s office are calls that are within the city limits and could be managed by the NPD.

And there’s no definitive way to know how that impacts the police department’s crime stats, Brown said.

Police Chief Mike Mullins said if a call goes to the sheriff’s office that could have been handled by the NPD, he has no way of knowing.

“If we don’t get the call, I don’t have any way to know,” Mullins said.

But even though the sheriff’s office is logging calls for the NPD, Brown doesn’t mind — neither does Mullins.

“We all have the same job to do, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Brown said.

Brown said one of his main goals when he took office was to encourage cooperation between the ACSO and the NPD.

Brown said he felt that ability to work together was lacking during the previous administration.

County officials are also pleased with Brown’s numbers, even if they do include city calls.

Henry Watts, president of the Adams County Board of Supervisors, said he’s pleased with the job Brown’s doing.

“I think the crime business is here to stay and we have to do the best we can to fight that,” Watts said. “And (Brown’s) doing that.”

Regardless of what the stats say Brown said his primary focus as sheriff is simple — fight crime.

“That’s what we’re here for,” he said.