Youngstown logs progress in reducing its homicides, but it’s far from enough

Year-end data from the Youngstown Police Department indicate that the city became a slightly safer place in which to live and work in 2016.

It’s indeed refreshing to see that the number of homicides, the most violent of violent street crimes, declined 22 percent in 2016 after having increased about 15 percent in 2015.

What’s more, the total number of homicide victims – 18 – fell to its lowest level since the 1980s, before the rise of gang and drug warfare that propelled the annual killing toll on the mean streets of the city to as high as 68 in the 1990s.

Youngstown police and auxiliary anti-violence advocates and agencies share in the progress achieved and deserve recognition for their beefed-up attention and concrete actions toward making the city a little less frightening and grisly for us all.

HOMICIDE TOLL IN PERSPECTIVE

Yet despite that positive one-year trend, Youngstown clearly remains a very dangerous place, many times more so than most other cities its size or even larger.

Consider Canton, for example. The county seat of Stark County with a population about 10,000 greater than Youngstown, recorded only nine homicides in 2015, compared with 23 killings in Youngstown.

Closer to home, look to Warren. The county seat of Trumbull County recorded only four homicides both in 2015 and in 2016. The former capital of the Connecticut Western Reserve has about two-thirds the population of Youngstown, but a homicide rate that is 350 percent below that of its urban neighbor in Mahoning County.

In addition, Youngstown’s optimistic trend line continues to deceive when placed in a broader national perspective. Nationwide, the FBI reports an average homicide rate of 4.5 victims for each 100,000 population set. To conform to the national average, Youngstown would have to lower its level of slayings dramatically to only three per year, six times fewer than last year’s toll.

GUARDED OPTIMISM FOR MORE IMPROVEMENT

Nonetheless, despite the gloom reflected in those figures, the measurable reduction in homicides in 2016 ushers in guarded optimism for continuing improvements toward a safer, saner and more secure Youngstown.

Police Capt. Brad Blackburn attributes last year’s 22 percent decline partially to fewer retaliatory shootings on city streets. That likely resulted from increased manpower on the force, more aggressive street patrols and a stronger focus placed on homicide investigations. The department reported last year that it has a clearance rate of homicides of about 75 percent, significantly higher than the national average.

With more arrests of suspects, fewer of them are left to roam the streets to track down, attack and sometimes kill their enemies in cold blood.

Another factor that likely played a role in last year’s progress was the department’s Community Policing Unit. Last year was the first full year of its operation.

The unit, which stations one officer regularly on patrol in each ward, has succeeded in initiating crime sweeps and in enforcing quality-of-life municipal laws.

Their constant presence in neighborhoods in all wards of the city serves as a visible and viable deterrent to crime of all levels of seriousness.

Police Chief Robin Lees also singles out the work of the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence as a source for greater civility within the city.

CIRV, a partnership of law enforcement, social-service agencies and the faith community, works to reduce gun violence by targeting young, midlevel offenders for intensive intervention. The group, under the direction of coordinator Guy Burney, has worked successfully with would-be gangbangers to drive them away from a life of crime.

Clearly, those and other crime-fighting initiatives must intensify their efforts to remove the longstanding high-crime stain on Youngstown’s image that diminishes quality of life and repels economic development and growth in the city.

Let the very real progress of 2016 serve as a launching pad toward even more significant casualty reductions from the killing fields of Youngstown in 2017 and beyond.