MARYLAND

String of homicides: What's going on with violent crime in Salisbury?

The Daily Times

Maryland State Police are investigating an early Saturday homicide in a residence on Middle Neck Drive just past the Spring Garden Avenue intersection in Salisbury.

Salisbury's intense run of homicides in 2017 began June 10 with a knock on the door of a Middle Neck Drive home.

When 57-year-old Anthony Cropper answered it, court documents show he was gunned down by a masked man.

Less than an hour later, police said 20-year-old Jaquonta Walton was shot outside the VFW on West Main Street. He was driven to Peninsula Regional Medical Center where he was ultimately pronounced dead.

BACKGROUND:2 more arrests made in Middle Neck Drive homicide

Over the next several weeks, Salisbury, saw the number of murders climb for 2017.

In total, the city has experienced seven homicides so far — all within a three-month span. Last year, Salisbury only had two in city limits.

"That is a lot of violent crime in a very short period of time, which is not something that we have experienced here in many years, actually," Salisbury Police Chief Barbara Duncan said in early August.

That was a week before the city's most recent homicide, the shooting of 31-year-old Arthur Smith Jr. on Aug. 14, which brought the city to its highest total since 2010, the last time there were as many as seven.

Although crime overall has been decreasing, this recent violence is something city officials are keeping a close eye on.

"For us, it's not enough to just say, 'OK, so we rest on our laurels,' Mayor Jake Day said.

Any time there's an armed robbery or an aggravated assault, Day said those types of violent crimes have the potential to become a homicide. So far, nine suspects have been charged in connection with these killings, the majority of which involved the use of a firearm.

Three deaths were related to domestic issues, a factor Day said he hopes there will be more focus on as October is domestic violence awareness month.

To combat this violence, Duncan has announced a shift in the focus of the police department's Safe Streets team, which will now be concentrating its efforts on stamping out violent and gun-related crime in partnership with the Maryland State Police gang unit.

"So far, I've been very proud of the work that the Safe Streets team has been doing, and they've been having a positive impact for the betterment of the city," she said Thursday.

Police investigate a death ruled a homicide on Saturday, July 31, 2017.

The arrests

All but two of this year's homicide investigations have been closed with arrests.

It wasn't long after Cropper had been shot in the chest in early June that the first suspect was charged.

Police took 20-year-old Ryan Holden into custody less than 24 hours after the homicide, and within days, they'd arrested and charged 17-year-old John Schoolfield and 18-year-old Courtlen Coston in connection with the fatal shooting as well.

Similarly, the suspects investigators say were responsible for the death of a four-month-old infant and the stabbing of 32-year-old Tavin Molock were all charged within a week of those incidents.

"I think the rapid investigation and conclusion of investigations is almost the more critical measure of success," Day said. "Can we figure out and can we stop future threats by an individual who we know, now we know you are willing to kill somebody?"

In many of those homicides, the suspects didn't work alone.

In Molock's homicide, a total of seven suspects have been arrested.

Though they might not all have been carrying the weapon that caused his fatal wounds, charging documents indicate that in some way or another those individuals played a role in the events that led to the 32-year-old's death.

It's difficult to predict when a domestic dispute might turn into a homicide or a robbery suspect might decide to go so far as to kill a target, Day said, but investigators have been able to get some dangerous people off the streets.

"What we find is there are so many of these people, I don’t know if it amounts to conspiracy, but they’ve worked with others and told others what they were going to do, and so a lot of people are going to spend a lot of time behind bars," he said.

What's been one of the most disturbing elements for him is seeing how some of these incidents have escalated from domestic issues and "spiraled out of control."

In a July shootout at a Salisbury Denny's, the two men killed were cousins who Day said had been living together but were headed down separate paths in their beliefs.

The suspect charged in an early August infant death was the 4-month-old's 17-year-old biological mother, who charging documents show admitted to investigators that she had pushed her daughter's head into a wall while they were lying in bed together.

Among those charged in Molock's homicide was his girlfriend, and documents indicate the incident began as a dispute over money.

"These are the sorts of things that might be the end of your relationship, but it doesn’t need to be the end of someone’s life," Day said. "We’ve got to do better about talking about that and providing skill sets for people who otherwise are not able to cope with those challenges in their relationship."

Two additional homicide investigations remain open, as arrests have yet to be made, but Day said he's certain investigators know the identity of a suspect who is responsible for both deaths, a person who's already in jail for a separate incident.

Police investigate a shooting early Sunday morning, July 9, at the Denny's east of Salisbury.

Trends and patterns

Salisbury is no stranger to summer homicides.

Police department data shows 16 of the 30 homicides committed since 2007 fell in either May, June or July. In May 2008, the city saw three homicides in a two-week period, all of which were shootings.

That year the city experienced more than 2,600 "Part One" crime incidents, a figure that includes homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.

At 1,978 incidents, 2016 had the city's lowest number of part one crime incidents over the last 10 years. During that same period, the city's highest total reached more than 3,000 incidents, and the 10-year average is almost 2,400 incidents.

Since the city started tracking part one crime 31 years ago, Day said 2016 is the first year the number of those types of incidents has dropped below 2,000.

"When you think about what’s happened to our population over that time, it’s kind of stunning that we used to have 2,000 to 2,500 part one crimes when we had 7,000 people living in the city," Day said.

On the other side, calls for service to police have increased, with the 2016 total sitting at more than 61,000 calls compared to 43,605 in 2007.

Data shows the number of 2017 calls for service through July already exceeds the 10-year average for the same period by more than 3,000 calls.

That leap in the number of calls for service is something Day wants to see.

"The change in dynamic in the last 18 to 24 months reflects the change in policy, the change in procedure," he said.

The three largest categories increasing in calls for service are predictive policing checks, extra patrol checks and business checks, all of which have to do with preventing crime by making an officer's presence known.

Day said predictive policing software evaluates data and tells an officer where they should spend 15 minutes of a specific two-hour block to be most effective in curbing crime, whether it's a location where a criminal activity, such as theft, has been rampant or an area that hasn't been hit yet.

Extra patrol checks work similarly, he said, but they rely on officers' intuition and communication with the community, and business checks deter burglaries and robberies by placing officers in businesses during work hours or having them ensure doors are secure after hours.

During a weekly briefing, Duncan noted that Salisbury's spike in violence aligns with similar trends in its larger sister cities, and officials are keeping an eye on those issues.

"We are watching. We are learning," she said. "We are taking positives from what are coming out of those other cities and we're applying them here to get out in front of more of this type of violent crime."

She said the city saw roughly half the number of gun-related incidents by the end of July of this year compared to the same period last year, yet five of this year's seven homicides were committed with firearms.

"I know there is a lot of discussion about this problem both locally and even further out. Please know that we are working on it," Duncan said. "We are not siloed. We are not working on it by ourselves. We actually have very strong partnerships in place."

In 2016, the city saw a total 79 incidents involving a firearm, such as reports of shots fired and armed robberies. By the end of July of that year, the city had 51 incidents on record.

The previous year was much the same, with a total 84 events recorded for 2015, and 45 tracked by the end of July. But by the end of July of this year, Duncan said police were tracking just 26 gun-related events compared to previous years.

"We were really making progress until we had these four events that occurred related to gun violence here in the city," she said just days before the city saw its most recent fatal shooting.

What's next

In the past, the city has gone as long as 28 months without a homicide — in 2013 and 2014, the city didn't see a single homicide.

But Day said those types of downward trends in crime are no reason for officials to be lax in their efforts, especially when talking about a category of violent crime that's difficult to predict and prevent directly.

"That frankly has as much to do with luck as anything else," he said. "Homicides happen so infrequently given our population size that we can't really pat ourselves on the back for not having a homicide for 28 months."

Though it's hard for people to forget that in 2009 Salisbury's per capita crime rate appeared among the top five for cities with a population of at least 25,000, Day noted the city is making strides toward improvement.

They might not seem directly related to preventing criminal activity, but he and other city officials have some priorities in place that they hope working on might make a dent in the issue: homelessness, youth development, mental health treatment and substance abuse.

"All of those things are things that we see as reducing the likelihood that crime will grow even as our population grows,” he said.

Following the July shootout at Denny's, Duncan announced the police department would be shifting the focus of its Safe Streets team.

The police department was in a position to restructure the team's goals before July, she said, but the events at Denny's prompted them to change directions.

"Our Safe Streets team is now partnered directly with the Maryland State Police gang unit and we are working more of a focus on gun crimes and crimes of violence here in the city," she said in August.

In August, shortly after the shift, the Safe Streets team launched an operation targeting illegal dirt bike riding on city streets. Police said they had been receiving an increasing number of calls about "unregistered dirt bikes operating recklessly on area roadways."

More:Police: Unregistered dirt bikes seized from Salisbury home; suspects escape

On Aug. 24, Safe Streets officers targeted a Shiloh Street home where they had spotted three people leaving on unregistered dirt bikes, according to police. They followed the suspects, who were seen committing a number of traffic violations and fled when officers tried to stop them.

Police said the officers returned to keep watch on the Shiloh Street home where the suspects were seen hours later storing the bikes. The suspects were able to flee the residence before police could secure a perimeter, but Safe Streets officers obtained a search and seizure warrant that allowed them to recover the unregistered dirt bikes.

They subsequently released images of those bikes and have continued to investigate, asking that anyone with information contact the police department.

In early September, an arrest by a Safe Streets officer also yielded the recovery of drugs and a handgun. Police said the officer conducted a traffic stop on North Salisbury Boulevard and had a sheriff's office K-9 scan the car.

The K-9 alerted the officer to the presence of narcotics, according to police, and a subsequent search revealed a loaded Smith & Wesson .40 caliber handgun and crack cocaine in the car.

The driver, 26-year-old Jermaine Dupont, of Delaware, was charged with CDS possession, CDS possession with intent to distribute, handgun in vehicle, firearm possession/drug trafficking crime, illegal possession of a firearm and illegal possession of firearm ammunition.

Originally, the plan for the Safe Streets team was to have the officers concentrating their efforts on neighborhood complaints, but Duncan said they've shifted into a higher gear.

"We will still be handling those calls," Duncan said. "However, we have certainly reassigned our manpower so that it can be most effective in making sure that we get a hold of, prevent and then start to work on stopping this violent crime here in our city."