Crime rates down across city

Murders are up from 2004, but overall, Mayor says Gary is safer

by Andy Grimm

Post-Times staff writer

GARY – Monday’s triple-homicide boosted the city’s 2005 tally past the 2004 total and earned Gary a rare spot near the top of Chicago news broadcasts.

But Mayor Scott L. King on Wednesday said despite the three killings, crime statistics for the city show that overall Gary is a safer place than it has been in decades.

“Any attempt to portray this as a crime wave or an overall trend is media sensationalism,” King said. “We are going to keep doing what we are doing, because it is working.”

King praised the efforts of police officers and city initiatives that have reduced the overall number of crimes committed this year.

Despite a surge in crime this summer, as gang rivalry heated up in Glen Park, crime statistics citywide are down, and last year’s homicide total of 54 was the lowest in the city in more than 20 years, King said.

Until police found the bodies of Leonard Thompson Sr., Anthony Hamilton and Morden Bailey-Gilbert inside a home on the city’s north side, the city’s homicide total was 53, one killing fewer than 2004.

Citywide, crime in five of the seven categories tracked in the FBI ’s Uniform Crime Report decreased, including a 24 percent drop in robberies and a 17 percent reduction in vehicle thefts.

City statistics show robberies have declined by two thirds since 19_5.

The city did see a 13 percent increase in aggravated assaults, which includes non-fatal shootings, due in large part to this summer’s Glen Park violence. Police Chief Garnett Watson said the surge began shortly after the federal ban on assault weapons expired.

“We started to see AK-47s, with the longer clips you can spray more bullets,” Watson said. “The availability, cheaply, of these rifles was what was really fuelling that gang war in Glen Park initially.”

King noted that the city has sued gun manufacturers and local gun dealers, a lawsuit that is one of the few returned before federal legislation was passed to protect the gun industry from liability.

The mayor also noted that the drug trade is a major catalyst for violent crime and lauded the effects of the city’s drug court to help offenders find ways out of drug use and the criminal economy.

Watson said the city will install its first video surveillance pod at the intersection of Broadway and 5th Avenue before the end of the year. The department also has plans to expand the area covered by the ShotSpotter system, a network of devices that can almost immediately locate the sound of gunshots and direct police to the source, Watson said.