Retired officer says US 'a different country' from 5 years ago after spree of violent attacks on women
Five women have been attacked by strangers with criminal histories over the last three months in Nashville, Tennessee, as FOX 17 Nashville first reported.
"We live in a different country than we lived in five, 10, 15 years ago than we do now," Ken Alexandrow told Fox News Digital. Alexandrow is the founder of tactical training company Agape and a veteran Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) officer who spent three years as a member of the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force.
The most recent attack was against 34-year-old Vanderbilt graduate Alyssa Lokits, who died after a stranger allegedly shot her while she was jogging on a pedestrian trail called Mill Creek Greenway in southeast Nashville.
MNPD officers arrested Paul Park, 29, of Brentwood, and charged him with criminal homicide less than 24 hours after Lokits was found dead on the trail. Authorities have not identified a motive for the seemingly random attack.
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According to Williamson County court records obtained by Fox News Digital, Park had a criminal background with two prior offenses.
In 2017, Park was sentenced to probation as part of judicial diversion after a domestic assault arrest.
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Then, in 2018, Park was sentenced to 10 days in jail and supervised probation for violating his original probation sentence following his arrest for possession of drugs, with intent to manufacture, deliver or sell. One of the three drug charges was eventually dismissed as part of a plea deal and Park pleaded guilty to the other two drug charges.
In August, two men with multiple priors allegedly attacked four different women in completely separate incidents, FOX 17 first reported.
Jacob Harrison Thompson, 29, was charged with aggravated kidnapping, attempted aggravated rape and attempted rape in connection with the attacks of a 29-year-old woman at her car and a 30-year-old woman in a restroom. Both attacks occurred in downtown Nashville.
Thompson was listed as homeless at the time of the two incidents. He previously received a 5-year sentence for aggravated burglary in 2010 and a 16-year sentence for especially aggravated robbery in 2011.
The second suspect in the attacks against two other women in downtown Nashville, 27-year-old Deontez Drew, was listed as a registered sex offender at the time he allegedly attacked a 39-year-old woman and a 23-year-old woman, both downtown, while the victims were walking.
Drew was allegedly armed with a knife and baseball bat, respectively, during the two separate incidents.
"Those stats and statistics are being manipulated. The biggest reason is because less than half the police departments are actually reporting their level one crimes now," Alexandrow said.
A 2023 White House report notes that "only 67% of law enforcement agencies submitted crime data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) as of January 1, 2023."
The FBI also recently updated 2022 crime statistics to show an increase in crime that year. As Fox News Digital previously reported, the FBI had initially recorded a 1.7% decrease in violent crime two years ago, but updated those figures to show what was actually a 4.5% increase in violent crime in 2022.
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"With the movements of people wanting to marginalize and minimize police presence, well, that's exactly what you get," Alexandrow said. "And when you have people that constantly want to film the police … want to have them fired for doing their jobs, doing the best that they can, who wants to do this job? Ultimately, who suffers for this? Well, the women in Nashville, the people in Nashville, the businesses in Nashville."
He continued: "You ask [police] to do a thankless job and you persecute them and prosecute them, in some cases, for doing their job, and then you're upset that crime is up. Well, we as a society have created this conflict. It's an oxymoron."
In cities like Nashville, prison overcrowding has become an issue impacting how and when certain offenders are released, Alexandrow said.
"The one misnomer about prison is that it rehabilitates people, but it doesn't. It just makes you better at your craft," the 26-year MNPD officer said. "…There's no room in the prisons. So then they decide that this person is less violent than this person. So let's just let them out and put them on double secret probation. And hopefully they'll be a good person. But we already know that's not true."
Alexandrow added that visitors "can have a great time in Nashville," but as in other major cities, tourists need to be extra cautious and aware of their surroundings.
Fox News' Stepheny Price and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.