Youngstown gun arrests drop

By JOE GORMAN

jgorman@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

For the first time in three years, city police filed fewer gun charges in 2018.

A total of 80 gun cases were filed in municipal court in 2018 by the department, far fewer than the 129 in 2017 and 110 in 2016.

The department’s patrol division made 42 gun arrests in 2018, down from 68 in 2017, but records show that after filing 43 gun charges in the first six months of 2017, it filed 29 charges in the last six months of the year, followed by 23 in the first six months of 2018 and 16 in the second half of last year.

The vice squad filed 41 gun charges in 2018, down from 57 in 2017. The vice squad sometimes finds weapons and files charges when serving search warrants investigating drug activity, but it also files gun charges after finding weapons on traffic stops.

In 2017, the department filed four gun charges relating to incidents not answered by either the vice squad or patrol division.

Police Chief Robin Lees said he needs to study the data from 2018, which will probably be available within a couple of weeks, to determine why the decrease is taking place, particularly to see if the number of traffic stops by officers declined last year.

One factor Lees said may be responsible is training. The patrol division is down at least five officers, and several officers are still undergoing training before being assigned a patrol car on their own.

Lees also said several officers who left the department within the past year were experienced, aggressive and proactive. They accounted for many gun arrests on their own. He added it takes time to train their replacements.

Word may have also gotten out on the street that people had better beware if they had a gun on them because of the high number of gun arrests police made in 2016 and 2017, Lees said.

“People are potentially realizing, ‘I’m not going to get caught with a gun in the car,’” Lees said.

The gun charge that was filed most often in municipal court was weapons under disability, the term for a felon who is not allowed to have a gun because of a disability, which is usually a prior felony conviction.

The department filed 48 of those charges in 2018. In 2017, they filed 60 of those charges and 54 in 2016. The felon in possession of a firearm charge was also the weapons charge filed the most in those two years.

Lees said he will need to analyze statistics when they are ready to determine whether patrol cars should be moved to different spots in the city to seize more weapons.