Notable Decrease In Homicides A Result Of Multiple Ongoing Efforts, Commissioner Delroy Richards Says

ST. CROIX — The homicide count in the territory related to gun and stabbing violence was at 40 in late August (overall count including vehicular homicides was 47). On September 3, there was another homicide incident in St. Thomas where a victim named Jamal Meade was shot and killed, which brought the total count in gun and stabbing deaths to 41. The latest homicide occurred between Friday and Saturday, after police found a charred body in a vehicle in St. Thomas on Saturday morning, bringing this year’s count to 42; one of the highest per capita in the U.S.

Before September, the territory was averaging 5 homicides a month. Between September 4 and October 24 — about one week shy of two months — the territory has only seen 1 gun or stabbing-related homicide; an almost 90 percent decrease.

While two months is not a very long time, the sign is encouraging, and in a conversation with Police Commissioner Delroy Richards on Sunday, the commissioner said the decrease in homicides relative to gun and stabbing violence was a result of a number of initiatives both the St. Croix and St. Thomas-St. John police departments have been undertaking.

“We’ve obviously stepped up our initiatives. We’ve got a lot of guys who had guns off the streets, we got a lot of guys incarcerated and we got a lot of guys who’ve left the territory and we’re looking for them, so it’s a combination of different things,” Mr. Richards said. “The police efforts, obviously, I think they’ve been very much aggressive on the streets. I monitor my radio in the night and I turn it on in the morning between 3:00 a.m. – 4:00 a.m. and I can listen to the activities, and the officers are challenging people, and that’s what we need to do. They are being aggressive both here and in St. Thomas and it’s making a difference.”

The commissioner said the V.I.P.D. has also stepped up its outreach efforts as it attempts to steer away the younger generation from violence. “We’ve been more aggressive in doing that, so those various components sometimes change the status quo,” he said.

According to Mr. Richards, police have been persistent in targeting known criminals, and have managed to incarcerate them on other crimes that may not directly involve gun violence, but may be related to assault, robbery or other criminal activities. And he noted that some of the individuals involved in gun violence have themselves died by gun violence.

“We’ve targeted a lot of individuals, some of them have been arrested for other crimes — we have quite a number of individuals that have been incarcerated. Those who have been incarcerated have remained there and we have others who are deceased, and some of those deceased are individuals who were involved in previous shootings before,” the police commissioner said.

Even criminals who have left the islands are not safe, especially those suspected to be involved in homicide cases. The commissioner said police are pursuing suspects in multiple states on the U.S. mainland, with three teams made up of six detectives leading the charge.

“It’s a lot of different things,” Mr. Richards said.

But the commissioner admitted that there’s difficulty in predicting the number of homicides that may occur in any given year. Mr. Richards said he’s seen some crime statistics going back to 2005, “and I’m seeing homicides go up to as much as 50-something, so this year is not the record as people are saying; we’ve had these numbers really high, and it stays steady for some reason. It’s like 50-something one year and then it comes down to about 40-something homicides and it stays that way for several years and then one year it drops down to about 30-something. It fluctuates, but we are not at the highest that we’ve  ever been.”

Even so, the commissioner said police efforts will continue, and he commended the men and women in the force for their ardent work to quell crime.

Feature Image: Police markers number shell casings at a crime scene near the St. Croix Central High School in September, 2015. (Credit: Ernice Gilbert, VIC)