NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said in the early part of 2024, the city has seen fewer shootings and homicides than at the same point last year.
“This time last year we had four homicides,” Drew said to a Facebook audience. “We had two this year, and one of those was cleared. This time last year, we had 13 individual shootings. We currently have seven.”
That’s a nearly 50% decrease in homicides and shootings from the same period a year ago.
Drew applauded the community for helping the police department make arrests. He used a recent January homicide arrest as a prime example.
“That was directly because of community engagement and involvement,” he said.
The one area Drew said the department is seeing an increase in is robbery.
“There were some laws changed and some incidents are done by reporting, not crime,” Drew said. “Here is an example: if I go into a 7-Eleven store and I steal a candy bar, last year, and this year, the actual charge is theft. If I get banned … and I come back into your store again, it’s not trespassing. It is a burglary for reporting purposes.”
He said it’s due to new reporting guidelines and laws centering on the FBI’s nationwide reporting system.
Drew acknowledged the data around homicides and shootings.
He said he knows it means someone lost a family member and a community had to deal with gun violence, but he noted that the department uses the data to see if the initiatives are working.
“I do look at how we are trending and whether our strategies are working,” he said. “I think some of the strategies we put into place towards the end of the year that paid off for us, that carried over in the first part of the year, but we don’t want to just rest on that.”
