Seven months ago, Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams warned City Council that gun violence remained a concern even as other types of crime were trending down.
As Williams told reporters on Nov. 20, "the community needs to step up and help us to prevent gun violence, and they can’t just depend on the police department to respond after the fact and pick up the shell casings and arrest the bad guys.”
In February, Williams told council members that police recorded a near-30-percent drop in major crime offenses since a spike back in 2020. But the change was largely driven by decreases in crimes against property and again, gun violence remained a serious issue.
On Monday night, Williams shared his latest quarterly crime update with Springfield’s highest elected officials. Much of his focus was on good news.
Williams shared a “little snapshot of how we compare January through April over the last three years" and noted "we continue that very positive trend of crime moving down overall, about a 2.5 percent reduction.”
Williams said crimes against persons and violent crimes continued to move in a positive direction, down 6.1 percent for the first four months of this year compared to last year. He highlighted two types of violent crime that were trending the wrong way last year — but have been reduced since that time: a 13-percent reduction in aggravated assault and a 4.5-percent reduction in just simple assault.”
Williams said crimes against property were down 3.2 percent. In terms of gun violence, he reported 70 shots fired calls to police so far this year. Springfield officers have seized 90 illegal guns so far this year. For all of 2023, they seized 266 illegal firearms.
Williams also reported on police staffing, noting the Springfield department has 58 vacant positions with 278 officers available for duty.
