Overall crime rate drops
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on February 25, 2017 11:53 PM
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Goldsboro experienced a 10 percent drop in its overall crime rate in 2016 compared to 2015, according to the Goldsboro Police Department's most recent Uniform Crime Report.
This downward trend marks the lowest crime rate in Goldsboro in at least 5 years, said Chief Mike West.
Crime data shows the overall number of crimes committed in 2016 was at its lowest point since at least 2011.
"I was kind of shocked at that when I was doing the numbers," West said.
West acknowledged a paradox happening in the area where people seem to feel as though crime is on the rise and think the community is more dangerous, but data shows that crime is trending downward -- including violent crimes.
"It's lower, and nationwide there's a trend where it's lower," West said.
Violent crimes -- except homicides and rapes -- all dropped. This includes crimes such as assaults, aggravated assaults, robberies and burglaries.
The homicide rate spiked by 22 percent, as well as rapes, which went up 50 percent, and motor vehicle thefts and arsons spiked by 24 percent and 150 percent, respectively.
In the past five years, there were 44 homicides in the city -- 19 of which remain unsolved, according to the crime data.
West said he believes gang activity could have contributed the rise in homicides.
"I think they're getting a little bit more organized," West said.
More specifically, West said he feels like in 2016 there were more murders where the victims and suspects knew each other compared to previous years.
"Sometimes when I say gang-related, we could probably soften it a little bit and say it was -- the two individuals involved, they had some sort of knowledge of each other, whether they had a history with each other, so it just wasn't random," West said. "The suspects that we do know, and the arrests that we do know, there was some gang-affiliation with it."
But robberies went down by 8 percent, while aggravated assaults dropped by 15 percent, simple assaults were down by 6 percent, break-ins were down by 11 percent and larcenies also dropped by 13 percent.
West said there are several possibilities as to why crime dropped locally.
One is increased communication between officers on different shifts about what they are seeing in the areas they patrol.
Add in new technology such as ShotSpotter -- the city's automatic gunshot detection system -- and new equipment for the department, plus more community involvement, pay increase incentives and a new gang suppression unit, and crime drops.
West added that help from teams with the Wayne County Sheriff's Office in tackling crimes and making arrests around the city in 2016 helped the department.
West said the city's crime rate reduced despite a manpower shortage in the police department.
"It forced us (into) looking more at data and directing what limited resources we had to these areas, and I think that helped," West said. "I think it's a bunch of little things that have helped, and overall, the crime looks like it's going down nationwide."
West added there was the potential that crime trended low in 2016 because of Hurricane Matthew, which struck in October 2016 and devastated the region.
The department was expecting a large spike in home break-ins and thefts, but that increase never came, West said. And the rise that did happen was minimal.
Now the department has set a goal to reduce crime in 2017 by 5 percent compared to 2016 -- a goal that has been set each successive year since 2014.
Goldsboro's crime clearance rate is 28 percent, meaning arrests are made in that percentage of reported crimes on the UCR, compared to the national average of 22 percent.
"The violent crime overall is down nationwide and it could be that people who were responsible for it in the past, they're probably either incarcerated or out of place," West said. "I think it also goes with the officers because morale is up in the department, there's a whole lot more communication between the officers.
Before, when the morale was not so high, officers kind of just came in and punched the clock and went home at the end of the day, he said.
"Now there's a whole lot more communication between officers, between shifts sharing information."