Chattanooga police recorded 27 forgery or counterfeiting cases from April through September 2026, the fewest for that window in the twelve years the dataset covers (2015 to 2026). In the same months of 2019 there were 157 (-82.8%), and from 2015 through 2019 the window never went below 142. The count was 130 in 2022, 67 in 2023, 50 in 2024 and 43 in 2025. Each case number is counted once, and cases marked Unfounded are excluded.

Full years show the same path: between 276 and 334 cases a year from 2015 through 2019, 226 in 2022, then 133 in 2023, 94 in 2024 and 74 in 2025 (-73.2% from 2019 to 2025). From 2015 through 2019 the city averaged about 26 of these cases a month; in 2024 and 2025 it averaged 7. Monthly counts in 2026 have run between 1 and 6.

The fall was not gradual. From January 2022 through May 2023 police recorded an average of 18.0 forgery or counterfeiting cases a month; from June 2023 through September 2026 the average was 6.4 (-64.4%), and no month in that stretch recorded more than 12. Police cases overall fell 12.7% between the same two periods (4,845 to 4,231 a month), and false pretense/swindle cases held level at about 58 a month, so the step is much sharper for this category than for police work in general.

It is not confined to a few locations. The ten addresses with the most forgery cases since 2015 (mostly retail corridors on Gunbarrel Road, Cummings Highway, Market Street, Rossville Boulevard, Brainerd Road and Hamilton Place Boulevard) went from 13 cases in April-September 2019 to none in 2026; every other address went from 144 to 27. All six police zones were lower (Charlie North 47 to 11, Adam South 41 to 4, Adam North 19 to 7, Baker South 19 to 2, Charlie South 17 to 0, Baker North 14 to 3), and so were all nine council districts. Cases where forgery was the only offense listed fell from 117 to 21.

Across the five fraud-type categories together (forgery, swindle, card fraud, impersonation and wire fraud) the April-September count went from 785 in 2019 to 567 in 2026 (-27.8%); swindle rose from 306 to 354 over the same window. Police cases of all kinds went from 31,149 to 28,444 (-8.7%), so forgery fell from 0.50% of cases to 0.09%.

The share of forgery cases cleared by arrest was similar at both ends: 27 of 157 in April-September 2019 and 4 of 27 in 2026, though newer cases have had less time to close.

The dataset records incidents reported to or by police and gives no reason for the decline. A sharp drop beginning in a single month (June 2023) fits a change in what gets reported to police, or in how such cases are classified, as well as it fits fewer forgeries, and this data cannot separate those. The comparison uses April through September because the published file has far fewer records for February and March 2026 than for the months around them.