Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

Story by Travis Kellar – [email protected]

Interactive by Brigid Edmunds – [email protected]

WILKES-BARRE — Gun violence in the city surged more than 300 percent over the past 10 years, according to a recent review of Wilkes-Barre Police Department data provided to the Times Leader. Police officials, while cautioning their own numbers may not be precise, say the data accurately reflects the trends their officers are seeing play out on the city’s streets.

According to data collected by the department’s CompStat program, there were 196 total aggravated assaults with firearms recorded from 2005 to 2015. Annual numbers have steadily increased from nine recorded in 2005 to 37 recorded in 2015.

While shooting incidents have increased, the total number of arrests by the department for all crimes has gradually declined since 2006 when there were 4,106 arrests. In 2015, there were 2,350 arrests.

Homicides by firearms have generally remained stable with the exception of 2013, when there were 12 homicides by firearms, two of them in one incident, in a year that saw killings in the city break double digits for the first time in a decade. At the time, officials called the spike in homicides “an anomaly” they were quickly trying to address.

Police say data subject to change

Wilkes-Barre police say that, while their data accurately reflects local trends, the exact numbers for each year may not be precise.

Chief Marcella Lendacky explained that, in 2011, the department began using Total Enforcement software to log reports within the city. Before 2011, the department’s data logs were based on handwritten reports by officers, she said.

Lendacky said Total Enforcement originated out of New York and, given the differences in the legal statutes for specific crimes, it took some work to get the system in sync with Pennsylvania law.

“There was a lot of transition from New York to Pennsylvania,” Lendacky said.

Lendacky and Sgt. Chris Mortensen, a records specialist, explained that some cases of harassment have been inaccurately classified as aggravated assaults. In other cases where a single case may involve multiple counts of aggravated assault, Lendacky said the system sometimes counts them as three separate incidents.

Despite the move to a computerized system, Lendacky said handwritten reports were more precise.

“You didn’t have that variation,” she said.

Shootings not geographically limited

A review of homicides provided to the Times Leader as part of a right-to-know request shows that contrary to popular perceptions, fatal shootings haven’t been limited to any one area of the city.

The map below was compiled from the city’s data and the Times Leader archives. Click on the markers to learn more about each case.

Legend: 2011 – Blue, 2012 – Green, 2013 – Red, 2014 – Purple, 2015 – Yellow

 

Drug trade a major factor

U.S. Attorney Peter Smith said his agency has noticed the increase in shootings from reports provided by local law enforcement agencies and media outlets.

Though cautioning he could not be certain, Smith said there are indications the shootings tend to be linked to drug trafficking activities in the region.

“There tend to be shooting incidents … in connection with drug deals that go bad or go south, or drug dealing in general,” he said. Smith added the heroin trade is “particularly ugly,” often leading to deals going wrong and dealers using force to protect their territory.

Smith added that Wilkes-Barre’s location as a hub between several interstate highways contributes to its position in the northeast’s drug trafficking market. He was careful to distinguish between the drug trade and street gang activity in general, saying that while Wilkes-Barre does have a gang presence, it’s more of an issue in cities like York.

“I think a lot of the problem in Wilkes-Barre goes beyond gang activities,” Smith said.

Lendacky agreed a majority of the city’s crime is directly related to drugs.

“Conservatively, 90 percent of the crime is related to drugs,” she said. Lendacky believes gang activity does play some role in the violence, however, explaining that one of the department’s detectives has been attached to the FBI’s local gang unit.

Economic, social causes

Andrew Wilczak, assistant professor of criminology and sociology at Wilkes University, added several other factors can influence spikes of violent crime, including shifts in population and businesses, an especially hot summer and tensions over elections.

Poor economic conditions are another trigger.

“If there is a lack of meaningful jobs — meaning jobs that offer people more than just a chance to survive, and instead offer a real shot at getting into the middle class — there’s more likely to be violence,” Wilczak said.

Wilczak also noted youth tend to be more susceptible to participation in violent crime, particularly if they feel they don’t have a place in society.

“If they feel the rest of society doesn’t want them, and they haven’t seen a lot of success in terms of education, then they can become disconnected from society and that makes it more likely that they’ll become violent, because why not?” he said.

Wilczak also noted that when looking at violent crime data, it’s important to keep the city’s size in mind.

“Wilkes-Barre has an unfortunate reputation for being a violent place because of the way the crime rate is calculated, but my guess is that if you told most people that there were ‘only’ seven homicides in a city of over 40,000 people, they’d be surprised,” he said. “Same with the number of shootings. It’s important to keep that in perspective.”

Lendacky said violent activity at the Sherman Hills apartment complex on Parkview Circle, the site of numerous shootings in the past decade, has been “way down” in recent years, a claim supported by data showing only one firearms-involved homicide in the past five years at the complex.

While the overall number of aggravated assaults with firearms appears to have steadily climbed over the last 11 years, Wilczak said predicting what will happen in 2016 and beyond boils down to guesswork.

“The number of shootings the previous year is really the only way to try to guess how many shootings there will be in the current year, but it’s obviously not going to be 100 percent accurate,” he said.

Reach Travis Kellar at 570-991-6389 or on Twitter @TLNews.