Violent crimes are on the way down in the Elm City, according to 2016 statistics released Thursday by the New Haven Police Department.
The number of homicides had dropped from 34 in 2011 to 13 last year. The number of robberies, rapes and aggravated assaults last year were lower than in 2015.
“I want to thank the men and women of this police department who go out there every day, they’re the real heroes here,” Assistant Chief Achilles Generoso said at a Thursday morning news conference. “They’re the ones that have driven down these numbers.”
Between 2003 and 2012, there was an average of 126 non-fatal shootings. That number dropped to 64 in the past four years.
“We’re not sitting on our laurels,” said Asst. Chief Generoso, who is in charge of the NHPD Investigative Bureau, “we’re moving forward to drive down those numbers that we’ve already driven down by half.”
U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut Deirdre Daly said the decline in violent crime reflects the success of Project Longevity, a joint New Haven Police and federal law enforcement initiative that targets the most violent offenders.
“I would suggest that what it is is an intensive open and transparent sharing of intelligence,” she said at the news conference.
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This year New Haven Police plan to step up that collaboration with a new state of the art intel crime center. Interim Chief Anthony Campbell said it will tap into the ShotSpotter technology that alerts police when and where shots are fired.
“We’ll be able to pull up photographs, video etc.” Chief Campbell said, “to be able to share with our partners and make apprehensions a lot quicker, grab people who may have been involved in violent crimes.”
Larceny and motor vehicle thefts in New Haven are two crimes that did go up in 2016 from the previous year – both by less than 10 percent.
At the news conference, Chief Campbell said officers should be outfitted with body cameras by June.
