AMARILLO, TEXAS -- There's good news from the Amarillo Police Department.  We take a closer look inside an annual report that showed an 11 % decrease in crimes.

The decline we're talking about happened in part one crimes, the worst types of crime, from theft and robberies, to rape and murder. It's not just the blue suits and handcuffs that help police lock up bad guys. They're now concentrated on something called "Hotspot Enforcement"

It's a term for putting more officers at a specific intersection or a few blocks from where criminal activities happen more often. "We're really going to focus on additional force to an extent, officers narcotics guys, depending on what the situation may be, trying to get it under control and eliminate it from the community," said Cpl Jerry Neufeld, from the Amarillo Police Department.

It's a community that now has an eleven percent drop in part one crime. Part of that combination, the "COPPS" program, where officers patrol on bicycles instead of cars or motorcycles.

"They work in a concentrated area of town that they're assigned too and work with the community leaders ... so officers can be more of a neighborhood hood officer that the neighborhood has ownership to," said Neufeld.

And since COPPS officers aren't answering calls for service, it helps them have more freedom to be available to the community, and that has helped the department take a bite out of crime.  It also seems we're ahead of the curve around here. The major crime rate in Texas decreased by nearly three percent last year.

But a few areas did see increases. If you received a traffic ticket from APD recently, you've got plenty of company. In total, motorcycle officers gave out almost 29,000 tickets, that's about 79 tickets per day.