During her monthly report to Milford City Council, Police Chief Cecilia Ashe added comments related to recent gun violence in Milford. In the past few weeks, there have been two shooting incidents, one resulting in death, as well as several gun possession arrests, including a student.
“I want to highlight some of the comments and concerns in reference to the recent gun violence we have experienced over the last month in the city,” Ashe said. “I know that at times like this, when we do experience these incidents, people want answers. The two particular incidents were domestic related.”
Ashe continued, explaining that she did not think it appropriate for the police chief to come forward and talk about data or crime trends immediately after such incidents occur.
“I think it would be insensitive to the families who have lost a father, a son, a brother,” Ashe said. “In speaking to that, we will probably here in the next week, go over some of the data we are seeing as far as gun violence. I can say that we have a 75 percent reduction compared to last year and overall, Part I crimes are seeing a 28 percent decrease.”
Part I crimes are also known as index crimes, a set of eight serious offenses used by the FBI for statistical tracking and analysis.
“I think even though we have one or two of these incidents, as unfortunate as they are, the city is moving in a very good direction. We are engaged with the community, but at the time of the incident, I know some questions were arising,” Ashe said. “We also have to keep in mind that with modern technology and social media, these things may give the impression that there is an increase in violence or an increase in gun violence, when really, in fact, what we’re doing is trying to be transparent and get the information out to the public in a timely manner.”
Ashe pointed out that in the age of social media, it may appear that gun violence incidents are increasing, but their data is not showing that as a trend, pointing out again that both recent shootings were domestic related.
“As I’ve told council previously, Part I crimes are what people look at when they look to move to a city. They are looking at statistics when it comes to crime,” Ashe said. “So, we are doing a really good job. We hope in the next few weeks that we’ll be able to put out this ComStat report to the community so that they can track their area where there are crimes.”
Milford Police Department is also looking at technology o the website who want to go in and look at a particular area of the city, either where they live, are interested in living or opening a business, to give them an idea of how crime is in that particular area of the city.
