Gunshots fired citywide are up by 50 percent since record lows this time last year, while non-fatal shootings have seen a smaller uptick and homicides are slightly down.
Those latest crime stats are published in the New Haven Police Department’s latest monthly CompStat report, which provides neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdowns on the latest violent, nonviolent, and property crime numbers in the city.
The report covers crime stats from Jan. 1 through June 23. In that time period this year, New Haven had five reported homicides, 34 non-fatal shootings, and 72 gunshots fired.
During that same period in 2018, there were seven homicides, 23 non-fatal shootings, and 47 confirmed gunshots fired.
Click here to download the June 23 Compstat report.
Interim Police Chief Otoniel Reyes, whom Mayor Harp formally nominated on Monday to be the full-time head of the department, said he recognizes that the recent spate of gun violence in town, including the shooting of an 8‑year-old in Newhallville, has left many people feeling understandably upset.
“We had a spate of violence in the last month,” he said. “That overall violence has really caused some angst.”
“I am right now feeling, not just hearing, but feeling the angst of the community,” Reyes said. He knows people are hurting, and he promised that the department takes every violent act with the utmost seriousness. That continued diligent police work, he said, should be held up alongside the steady decline in crime over the years as an indication that New Haven is a safe, and safer, place to live.
Reyes also said that Darrell Stokes-Young, the 24-year-old victim of the city’s most recent homicide early Wednesday morning on Elm Street in Edgewood, was a Boston native who has lived in New Haven for several years. He said the department is confident that this homicide is related to the spate of recent shootings that have taken place in the city this summer.
Paul Bass Photo
Reyes at Tuesday’s City Hall announcement of his nomination to become permanent chief.
Reyes recommended that the year-to-date crime numbers included in the CompStat report be read with two large caveats.
First, these numbers are still on par with recent years’ considering the broader, decade-long context of consistent declines in violent crime. Last year was a “banner year” in terms of low violent crime, he said.
While this year’s to-date numbers are not too far off from last year’s, they are well in line with the confirmed shooting numbers in the 70s range going back to 2014.
Back in 2011, the city reported 223 shots fired through June 23. And that was when the city was covered by much fewer ShotSpotter sensors, which allow officers to pinpoint within seconds where a gunshot has been fired from. The city is comprehensively covered by ShotSpotter today, he said, and still the confirmed shots fired consistently plateau at around 70 at the mid-year mark.
More importantly, Reyes said, statistics represent only one window into understanding what causes crime and how crime rates change year to year.
“We have a very good sense of what’s driving this crime,” Reyes said about the ongoing fights between beefing groups that he and his officers know are behind this latest round of gun violence.
The department has made “significant arrests and significant seizures of guns” from suspects in these cases in recent months, he said, including two guns that might have been used in some retaliatory action taken off the streets today.
His officers and detectives have their “finger on the pulse” on the causes of recent gun violence in this city, he said, and are proactively working on preventative, not just reactive, moves to stop more violence from being perpetrated.
