While a series of recent shootings across Cincinnati have raised concerns about neighborhood violence, Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac today told Cincinnati City Council’s Law and Public Safety Committee today that crime overall is down.
Ten shootings in Bond Hill, South Fairmount, the West End and other locations over the past few weeks have dominated news headlines. But overall, the city’s 147 shootings represent a reduction from last year, when 156 people had been shot by this date. Shootings so far this year are also 15.5 percent below the city’s three-year average, Isaac said.
Twenty-two of those shootings this year were fatal, combining with other murders to bring Cincinnati to 25 homicides so far this year. That’s down from 34 at this time last year.
“It is important to note that 2018 was the lowest we’ve had in a decade, and this year is lower so far,” Isaac said. “Although we have experienced a spike in the past few weeks, our numbers are lower than they have been in a decade.”
Property crimes are down 23 percent over the last seven years, Isaac says. Violent crime in general is also down about 1 percent from last year and down 14.5 percent from the three-year average. Aggravated assaults, however, are up. There have been 343 so far this year — an increase of 9 percent over the city’s three-year average and a 27 percent increase from this time last year.
CPD’s clearance rate — the rate at which the department solves and prosecutes crimes — has dipped so far this year, though officials say they’re confident it will rise back to the department’s 65 percent average by the end of the year. CPD has cleared about 44 percent of its cases so far this year.
Isaac attributed some of the reduction in crime to ShotSpotter, a technology that uses up to 25 sensors per square mile on rooftops and utility poles to detect gunshots and relays the location of the shots to police in under a minute. So far, Cincinnati has installed ShotSpotter in an area made up of Avondale, Corryville, Mount Auburn and Walnut Hills. The city plans to place the technology in Price Hill in the next month. The technology costs about $200,000 a year in Avondale and is expected to cost a similar amount in Price Hill.
“Firearms are a big piece of the challenges we see around violent crime,” Isaac said. “ShotSpotter has seen great success in its use in Avondale. We’re launching in Price Hill in the next month or so.”
Mayor John Cranley has said that a 50-percent drop in shootings occurred after the introduction of ShotSpotter in Avondale.
But some in other cities have questioned whether the tool is effective, and at least one municipality has ceased using the technology after it missed some gunshots.
Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman says ShotSpotter is valuable but cautions that it alone doesn’t reduce shootings.
“ShotSpotter isn’t the silver bullet,” Smitherman said. “There is a lot of policing that is also going on in District Four (where ShotSpotter is currently in use). We’re emphasizing that it is one tool among many things that we will be implementing in Price Hill.”
This article appears in Jun 19-26, 2019.