Gang activity and shooting violence made 2014 a “difficult year” for Aurora police, who experienced the highest shooting and homicide numbers they’ve seen in six years, said Aurora Police Chief Gregory Thomas.
Eight homicides were put on the books during the last 12 months, and Aurora ended the year with a recorded 103 shootings. It was the most incidents since 2008.
“We haven’t seen triple digits in a long time,” Thomas said of the statistic.
And, he added, his department is working diligently to stop the number in its tracks.
Elgin has Kane County’s second biggest population, but it saw little of the violence that broke out in Aurora.
“Knock on wood, but we’ve been doing better in Elgin,” said Deputy Police Chief Bill Wolf. “At the beginning of 2014 we saw a little spike in gang crime. But that leveled out and we’ve been doing pretty well ever since then.”
Aurora police can’t say the same, although Thomas noted, “if you look at long-term statistics, I still think it’s a tremendous trend downward.”
Ten years ago, in 2004, 259 shootings were reported and 18 people were murdered throughout Aurora. By 2012, those numbers were down to 59 and zero. Since then, the shooting numbers have gone up: from 59 to 74 to finally 103.
“That’s a trend I don’t want to see repeated,” Thomas said.
Wolf said Elgin’s administrators are still compiling final crime statistics for 2014, which usually are announced in late January. But the number of homicides is easy to recall because it is so small. For the past three years in a row, Elgin has experienced three homicides per year. And few lately have been related to gangs, police said.
Shootings and gang-related crime also have gone down in Elgin in recent years, Wolf said. Gang crimes decreased 22 percent from 2012 to 2013 and were at a 10-year low a year ago, he said.
According to Naperville Police Department Sgt. William Davis, the city didn’t have any shootings during 2014, and the city’s sole homicide was not believed to be gang-related.
“Fortunately, we’ve never had really many shootings in town,” he said. “We’ve always been successful in keeping the crime rate low when it comes to violent crime.”
Crime statistics in Naperville look vastly different from those recorded in some other towns in the area, he said. Naperville’s last gang-related homicide occurred in 2008, police said.
“Aurora has a lot of shootings that don’t end in homicide, and we don’t get a lot of that,” Davis said. “I think we are very strict with enforcement, especially in our downtown. We are aggressive in our patrols. A lot of our homicides result from domestic violence.”
Fighting back
The key to reducing the number of shootings, Thomas said, is to get the most prolific offenders off the streets.
“If you have 100 shootings, there aren’t 100 different shooters,” Thomas said. “We need to find who’s doing the shooting, and who’s calling the shots.”
Arrests have been made in three of Aurora’s eight 2014 homicide cases, but prosecution isn’t always easy. Thomas said most who witness shooting crimes are either reluctant witnesses, co-defendants or rival gang members who don’t want to talk to police but will retaliate in their own way.
“There’s a lot of reluctance on behalf of these individuals to speak with us, to testify in court, and do the things necessary to make an arrest happen,” Thomas said.
There’s also going to be “ebbs and flows within the gang culture,” he added. “Competition for land, for women, for drug sales … It’s hard to trace back like the Hatfields and McCoys.
“Bottom line is, it’s going back and forth, and it needs to stop.”
Keys to prevention
Wolf gives credit for the reduction in his city’s gang problems to community-based policing, in which some ROPE (Resident Officer Program in Elgin) officers live inside high-crime neighborhoods and get input from residents about what is going on.
He also gives credit to “a very active gang crimes unit; and civil lawsuits that prohibit specific members of two gangs from hanging out together.
“The lawsuits have proved a great tool because they let us keep gangs from hanging out together,” Wolf said. “When they hang out together, groups from different gangs can run into each other and bad things can develop.”
In Aurora, Thomas credited some of the same tools with helping prevent gang-related crimes. He said the court system has mechanisms in place to keep gang members from affiliating with each other if they are convicted of a crime. The convicted gang member can also be prohibited from wearing certain colors and clothing if a judge rules it appropriate.
“It’s about creating disruption in their (gang) system,” Thomas said. “Things fall apart if there is poor communication, and the same thing applies with a gang organization. Court-ordered no-contact is one of those measures.”
But prevention begins long before an arrest is made, he insisted, pointing to community organizations that promote gang prevention as key components in solving the problem.
“There is suppression, intervention and prevention,” Thomas said, adding that all three need to be addressed to rectify the ongoing gang problem throughout the city.
In Naperville, Davis said permanent beat officers will reach out to businesses and communities to help alleviate problems before they arise. That’s because the city’s downtown area can be a breeding ground for crime if officers aren’t keeping their eyes peeled and remaining vigilant.
“We do put a lot more officers down there, but we’re also working with business owners and management to identify problems before get worse,” he said. “We want to maintain good relationships with them, and try to prevent things before more serious.”
Davis said many of those problems were addressed last year by Naperville City Council, which made several changes to city ordinances in reference to liquor laws.
“We’ve always had a history of low amounts of crime, and we’re very fortunate for it,” Davis said. “I think it’s the people that live in the community.”
In Aurora, Thomas maintains that his officers are aiming for a similar result.
“We just need to make sure we’re watching the patterns,” he said.