Serious crime on the rise in new Rockford Policing District

“In this instance there are a couple individuals that are driving our violent crime rate and a couple people can create a lot of havoc in a short period of time,” say Lt. Darin Spades.One of the growing crimes in district two is shots fired and aggravated batteries. Police say some gang issues have caused a lot of gunfire to be exchanged. But there are more problems than just shots fired in the district. Police have also been dealing with more group A offenses, those are the most serious crimes including homicides, robberies and burglaries. “We’ve had an increase in the group A offenses in the district. We’ve had a large number of burglaries,” says Spades. The district saw a nearly 16-percent increase in burglaries and almost 30-percent rise in robberies. But there also a push to pin down some of the problem areas for the district that includes the Blackhawk Housing Complex. “If it’s drugs or guns or violence, we are going to encourage them to move on to every extent possible,” says Ron Clewer, Rockford Housing Authority, CEO. While RHA can evict people who are causing problems police say most of their calls do not involve a particular residence instead they are addresses or intersections nearby the housing complexes not actually inside Blackhawk. “All kinds of things that we are trying to do you know, not only visibly but behind the scenes, cameras, all kinds of different things that we are trying to do. It’s really important to us and its really important to the housing authority and its really important to the people that live there that they don’t live in fear,” says Spades. The RHA says its also trying to increase some of it’s own security measures. Plus, its managers and leaders meet weekly with police to look at problems within their complexes.

Read the full article at WREX 13 online: http://www.wrex.com/story/25769391/2014/06/13/serious-crime-on-the-rise-in-new-rockford-policing-district