CINCINNATI — Violent crime in Cincinnati has been decreasing over the past year but there are three types of crime have spiked in the last year, Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge told city council members Tuesday morning.
In a presentation to the Public Safety & Governance committee, Theetge and Dr. Jillian Desmond, CPD's senior crime analyst, told city council members that shootings involving children, car thefts and thefts from vehicles have increased in Cincinnati.
Shootings involving juveniles are at an all-time high — Desmond said she couldn't find a year in which more children were victims of shooting incidents going back at least 10 years.
Because of this spike, CPD is now tracking the data surrounding shooting incidents involving juveniles separately from other shooting data within the city, which is something Theetge said she's never had to do.
"Never before in my career have I seen a time where this significant increase has caused us to start tracking juvenile shooting victims the way we are now," said Theetge. "It is very concerning to us and we are doing what we can to try to get a handle on this."
In 2022, CPD tracked 33 shooting incidents involving juveniles and identified 35 children who were victims of shooting incidents. By contrast, in 2023, there have been 45 shooting incidents involving juveniles and 58 children who were victims of shooting incidents as of November 13.
Those numbers include a Nov. 3 mass shooting near Laurel Playground in the West End, where an 11-year-old boy was killed and five more people — four of them children — were wounded.
Desmond said the age demographics have shifted — shootings involving adults are down overall in Cincinnati, but shootings involving juveniles are high.
Juveniles are frequently involved in the car thefts and burglaries from vehicles as well, Desmond said.
Data she presented showed auto thefts increased at the end of 2022, when thefts of Kias and Hyundais increased dramatically. However, those thefts haven't tapered off much since the car companies began rolling out fixes that make the vehicles harder to steal. Instead, Desmond said people are still breaking into the cars, regardless of whether they've been fixed.
"It's a free-for-all with these Kias and Hyundais," said Desmond.
Instances of people breaking into cars to steal what people have left behind are also way up.
Specifically, Desmond said CPD is concerned with what's being stolen from those vehicles: Guns.
She told city council members there's been a dramatic increase in thefts from vehicles where a gun was stolen — up 30% over last year.
And those are just the firearm thefts CPD knows about, she said. Gun owners who haven't realized their firearms were stolen, or who didn't report it stolen for one reason or another aren't included in that data. Often, Desmond said, more than one gun is stolen in a single incident: Cincinnati has had roughly 650 stolen guns to date this year in around 300 separate incidents.
"Based on the data that you presented, if people were responsible and didn't leave firearms in their vehicles here in the city of Cincinnati, we really wouldn't have a problem when it comes to theft of firearms," said Scotty Johnson, chair of the committee. "I mean, don't get me wrong, one firearm stolen is too many, but we would not see this type of significant numbers of firearms being stolen. I'm amazed, that's almost frightening."
Johnson said he found it concerning that Cincinnatians are driving around the city with firearms in their vehicles, but aren't responsible enough to remove those firearms when they get out of the car.
When asked whether there was a root cause CPD could zero in on to reduce the amount of guns stolen from vehicles, Desmond said she could only speculate.
She said she believed part of the issue stemmed from thieves having known, before CPD realized it themselves, that vehicles were an easy way to find and steal unattended firearms.
Desmond said she believed another component of the thefts boils down to the perception those outside of Cincinnati have of the city. She said she believed the perception is that the inner city of Cincinnati isn't safe, so those who travel from outside the city — especially those who travel for large-scale events, like major concerts — decide to bring firearms with them to feel safer. But, those people then leave their firearms inside their cars while they attend the event they traveled to Cincinnati to attend, Desmond said.
Theetge said the rising CPD has seen within Cincinnati does not indicate there's a growing gang problem, however.
"We do not see what other cities see in a structured gang affiliation or problem," she said. "But we do have groups that operate together towards a goal of theirs, I guess you could say. But we do not see the structured gang problems that many large cities see."
Still, those groups have resorted to lashing out at one another, often over statements made over social media, Theetge said.
Despite the rise in shootings involving children, CPD was able to quell those numbers over the summer months — a time when violent crime often spikes each year, not just in Cincinnati.
Desmond pointed to programming and preparation by CPD leading up to the summer.
Theetge said non-policing efforts have also been critical in reducing violent crime overall in the city — like neighborhood liasons and the department's PIVOT program, which focuses on drilling down to determine the reason behind the violence and solving that issue.
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