Despite falling crime rate in Warren, work remains to heighten public safety

The recently released report on crime and public safety in the city of Warren for 2015 reveals a diverse set of encouraging, troubling and mysterious trend lines.

The data released this month by Warren Police Chief Eric Merkel are encouraging because they indicate violent crime in the second-largest city in the Mahoning Valley dropped markedly in 2015 over 2014, led by a whopping 50 percent reduction in the number of homicides – from eight to four. By comparison, Youngstown, a city only one-third larger than Warren, had six times as many homicides last year.

Some of the data, however, remain troubling. Most troubling is the dramatic rise in traffic accidents within the city limits. That category increased by an astonishing 83 percent over 2014. That stat should drive police and other public-safety leaders to unlock the mystery behind the spike and then take appropriate measures to help lessen the number of crashes.

VIOLENT CRIME

To be sure, the appreciable drop in homicides in Warren in 2015 stands out as a particularly heartening trend and one in which police officers, along with agencies cooperating with them, can take pride.

Merkel attributes some of that reduction to a program with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office that swung into high gear last year. The Safe Neighborhoods Initiative helps communities suffering from an onslaught of violent crime by targeting their most-violent offenders. The offenders meet with local, state and federal law enforcers who warn them that those who continue to commit crimes will be on police radar constantly.

In addition, offenders are given access to job training, alcohol and drug rehabilitation, plus other social services. They also meet with clergy, community leaders and residents who have lost loved ones to violence.

“A lot of the shooters and gangbangers don’t know the ramifications of their actions, but when you bring in a federal prosecutor, an emergency-room doctor, family members of victims, to tell them what happens because of their actions, it makes an impact,” Merkel said.

Clearly, it has made an impact in Warren. As a result, the city should continue and strengthen that partnership that involves a host of local, state and federal criminal-justice agencies.

But more can be done. Even though Warren, population 40,245, has reduced its homicides to four last year, that figure remains well above the national average of 4.5 per 100,000 people.

The one category of violent crime that increased last year, rape, mirrors national trends. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, rapes nationwide spiked about 10 percent in 2015. In Warren, the number increased from 43 to 51.

Though it may be somewhat comforting to recognize that many attribute the rise in rape arrests to a greater willingness of victims to report the crime, that can be no excuse for law enforcement in Warren or elsewhere to let down their guard in arresting suspects and the criminal justice system from prosecuting rapists to the fullest and harshest extent of the law. The surge also serves as a clarion call for women’s organizations and public-health agencies to aggressively pursue awareness campaigns on sexual-assault prevention.

TRAFFIC CRASHES

But of all the findings in the 2015 crime and public-safety report, the gargantuan spurt in traffic accidents emerges as the most surprising and enigmatic. The jump from 461 crashes in 2014 to 844 crashes in 2015 has Warren police scratching their heads in search for answers.

Some attribute it to the apparent rise in distracted driving. According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s post in Trumbull County, the number of crashes involving distracted drivers, many of whom were engaged in texting while driving, rose 11 percent from 2014 to 2015.

Others cite increases in drugged driving. Over the same period in Trumbull County, drug- and alcohol-impaired driving fatalities increased 100 percent, according to the OSHP.

Increasingly, it appears as if alcohol is playing a slightly smaller role in the tragedy of impaired driving. A Columbia University study recently showed a threefold increase in the number of fatal accidents caused by marijuana-using drivers. In Cincinnati, police report an epidemic of heroin-related automobile accidents, with cops there responding to as many as four heroin-related crashes per day, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

As in all facets of crime reduction and public-safety enhancement, good old-fashioned police work coupled with new and creative strategies can work. Warren’s deep decline in homicides is a solid case in point. Let the stellar work involved in achieving that success spread to all arenas of public safety in Warren this year and beyond.