Lakeland crime continues decline - The Ledger

Christopher Guinn @cguinnnews

LAKELAND — With zero gang-related shootings last year, 2017 provided a stark contrast to 2014, when Lakeland Police Department leaders counted 18 gang-related shootings in the city and feared a wave of street violence unseen for decades.

LPD's preliminary 2017 crime statistics reveal that the declining trend continued locally and throughout the country with an 8 percent overall reduction in violent crimes and 21 percent decrease in property crimes compared with 2016 in Lakeland.

"Although the police department played a role in that, the biggest part of that is the community involvement," Police Chief Larry Giddens said. "It's a community coming together to address a very significant problem."

In 2014, the department tallied 45 felony shootings and eight homicides.

Luckily, 2014 did not repeat, but the jarring level of violence acted as a spark to institute new programs to reconnect violence-wracked neighborhoods with the police department and City Hall.

The department counted 19 felony shootings and four homicides in 2015; 2016 brought 18 shootings and four homicides.

In 2017, the city tallied 11 felony shootings and one homicide, part of a 31 percent decrease in violent crime compared with 2014.

The figures were sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which compiles police agencies' crime stats. The figures listed here have not yet been certified by the state agency, but adjustments prior to the official publication are rarely substantive.

Lakeland Commissioner Phillip Walker, who sits in the Northwest District commission seat, said the reconnection of the police department to the neighborhoods on an individual-to-individual level has strengthened ties in the community.

About the community-policing unit, he said, "they've become the face of the law enforcement community" to neighborhoods.

"People know who Officer Joe and Officer Jane are," he said. "And if I see suspicious activity, I know I can tell them. ... Those things help; you get out there and talk to the people. It's a collaboration — people coming together."

The department touts a number of soft-power programs to prevent cops from being seen as an outside force.

Included in those efforts has been a "community-oriented policing" program, which frees officers from the call-for-service treadmill and allows them to put feet, eyes, ears and faces on a stable and consistent beat. The "Neighborhood Liaison" program, with 11 officers including a homeless-liaison officer and two sergeants, is now in its third year. Two officers were added to the program with Community Redevelopment Agency dollars, which are earmarked to fight neighborhood blight.

"You can tell the area around the significant investments (that have been made with CRA money) have cleaned up quite a bit because of our partnerships," CRA Manager Nicole Travis said. In total, the agency has spent about $11 million in projects in the Parker Street Neighborhood, including the $5 million Mass Market project.

She credits not just the shoe-leather policing but the officers' first-person knowledge and enthusiasm in offering creative ideas to contain "challenging properties" in the area.

The department also credits its 10-officer school-resource officer unit, five-civilian Community Services Unit and the Crime Analysis Intelligence Unit as part of its efforts in controlling crime and reconnecting with neighborhoods.

Partnership programs include the Police Athletic League, which the department said serves 1,500 children annually, the Gang Task Force and connections with faith-based organizations like the Ministerial Alliance and the Dream Center of Lakeland.

"It keeps coming back to me that the police department has to be part of the community, it has to be part of the fabric of the community," Giddens said.

"It establishes hope for people who didn't think they were cared about," he added.

Nationally, overall crime has continued to decline, with some blips. Motor vehicle theft was up 4.1 percent from January through June 2017 compared with the same period in 2016, and homicides were up 1.5 percent. The number of reported aggravated assaults had remained basically unchanged with a 0.1 percent reduction in that period.

Lakeland's crime counts beat those preliminary national numbers in all areas but aggravated assaults. In 2016, LPD counted 140 aggravated assaults; in 2017, the count was 146, a 4 percent uptick.

In property crimes, Lakeland experienced a major reduction, with 23 percent fewer burglaries in 2017 compared with 2016, 20 percent fewer larcenies and 32 percent fewer motor vehicle thefts.

Lakeland saw 21 percent fewer property crimes reported in 2017 than in 2016. The city saw a high number of larcenies and motor vehicle thefts in 2016, with 4,050 and 310 respectively. In 2017, those numbers dropped to 3,238 larcenies and 210 motor vehicle thefts. Burglaries have continued to decline for each of the past four years.

Celebration may be muted. Giddens, like most law-enforcement administrators, said he is reluctant to hold the statistical improvement as a banner — the exact ingredients of the complex socio-economic cocktail that drives crime remains the Holy Grail question of criminology.

But, the police chief admitted, 2017's numbers make him "want to jump up and down" with joy.

Christopher Guinn can be reached at Christopher.Guinn@theledger.com or 863-802-7592.

Let's block ads! (Why?)