Homicides, gun crimes up in Warren, township

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Warren-area homicides have risen compared with last year, including three last week.

Five people have been killed in Warren and Warren Township so far this year compared with three in 2011.

Warren gun crimes also are up, with nearly twice as many felons caught with firearms so far this year compared with the same period in 2012 — 22 instead of 13.

Nearly five times as many people have been charged with carrying a concealed weapon this year over last — 14 compared with three.

The spike in homicides may be partially because of the heat wave that has gripped the area the past couple of weeks, Warren Police Chief Tim Bowers said.

Also, the additional gun violence appears to be partly related to an increasing number of juvenile offenders, Bowers and other law-enforcement officers said Thursday at a press conference at the Warren Police Department.

Bowers, Sgt. Jeff Cole, Atty. David Toepfer of the U.S. attorney’s office and Warren Safety Service Director Enzo Cantalamessa pointed out that the U.S. attorney’s V-GRIP program is operating in Warren again this year.

“We’ve been doing it all summer, but we didn’t really tell the press or the public about it,” Bowers said.

V-GRIP stands for Violence, Gun Reduction Interdiction Program.

Despite the gun crimes and other homicides that have occurred in the Warren area this year, the cooperation among law- enforcement officers from Warren, the state and federal government has helped take guns and drugs off the street, Bowers said.

Toepfer said what officers in Warren and Youngstown have been seeing this summer is “the people you would expect to be carrying guns, and creating violence with those guns, have by and large not been carrying them with them this summer.”

Toepfer added, “And some of those people, for them, the message has gotten through — get caught with a gun, and you’re going to go to jail, and you’re going to go for a really long time.”

Toepfer said today’s juvenile offenders are “a new breed of criminal,” who “feel invincible, act invincible” and behave in unpredictable ways.

“We’re struggling along with everybody else both in the law-enforcement community both here in Warren and around the country. Slowly but surely, we’re figuring it out how to play their game, and we’re going to get them,” he said of youthful offenders.

When asked about the role Detroit natives play in violent crimes committed in Warren in recent years, Cole said he doesn’t believe the city has experienced a large migration of criminals into Warren, but he believes there have been families moving into the city from Michigan since the 1990s.

Many of the individuals charged with Warren crimes in recent years whose birthplace is in or near Detroit moved with their parents to the Warren area, Cole said.

“They have children, and the children grow up. They’re the offspring of people who established residency here. As Mr. Toepfer said, that’s the younger group we’re dealing with now — the offspring of people who moved here from the Michigan area.”

Bowers said Youngstown and Warren police are working together to “break down barriers” between the two cities.

“They’re here. We’re there,” he said. “Law- enforcement officers working together is the only chance to keep a lid on violence that has happened.”