Violent crime in Dover rose more than thirty percent in 2018 according to the city’s police chief.
Chief Marvin Mailey presented the Dover Police Department’s annual report to the city council and members of the community in attendance at Monday night’s city council meeting.
Mailey told the Dover City Council that violent crime had risen over 30% when compared to 2017.
“I’m not happy with this number and I’ll tell you why I’m not happy with this number”, Mailey said when he introduced the Violent Crime numbers to the council.
Mailey explained that in 2017 crimes including Murder, Forcible Rape, Robbery, and Aggravated Assult numbered 265. In 2018 that number rose to 346.
“That’s not satisfactory, for me or members of the Dover Police Department. We know that that is our mission. That is our first strategic goal as far as an agency.”, said Mailey referring to crime prevention.
“When I took over as chief I wanted us to do a better job of preventing crime…, We need to work more towards preventing crime.”
Mailey’s plan to reduce and prevent crime for 2019 is to move to directed patrols in certain areas of the city using grant money to pay for the increased patrols. As part of the plan, Mailey will introduce more foot patrols, more traffic enforcement and new cameras in the problem areas.
The Dover Police Department will also partner with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to implement the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative, according to Mailey. The initiative will bring in a third-party company that will put families in contact with mental-health professionals and drug-addiction counselors, along with other services. It will also bring together federal, state, local, prosecutors, and community leaders to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in a community and will develop a comprehensive solution to address them.
Mailey said that the department was seeing more and more crime created in the city due to the usage of narcotics. He said shopliftings have gone through the roof because people are stealing merchandise to buy drugs.
Mailey went on to tell the council that at the same time crime was up in Dover his department solved 30 percent more crime in 2018.
“I don’t like to dwell on the negitive, there are some things, obviously some work we need to do but we’re doing a lot of things right too.”
“I think our philosophy for crime prevention is sound, I think it needs some tweaking…, We’re a progressive department and we’re going to continue to push forward with new initiatives and new ideas,” Mailey said.
The numbers
Total Complaints for 2018 numbered 43,026. That is up from 42,822 in 2017.
Total Group A Crimes were up in 2018 by 4.3 percent. Group A crimes include Arson, Assualt, Bribery, Burglary, Counterfeiting, Destruction of Property, Drug Offenses, Embezzlement, Extortion, Fraud, Gambling, Homicides, Kidnapping, Larceny, Motor Vehicle Theft, Pornography, Prostitution, Robbery, Sexual Offences, and Weapons Violations.
In 2018 there were 4 murders in Dover. That matched the 2017 number. Sexual offenses, robberies, and assaults all went up, said Mailey.
Drug cases jumped 60 percent resulting in an increase of drug and money seizures in 2018.
Traffic arrest (citations) we’re down from 11,761 in 2017 to 9,281 in 2018. “Traffic Arrest are down. I don’t like that number. That number will come up, we’re going to put a much bigger emphasis on traffic enforcement…”, said Mailey.
While traffic enforcement was down vehicle crashes rose from 1817 in 2017 to 1856 in 2018.
View below. The presentation starts at 31:45.