Shootings in Reading up 57% in first 6 months of year from last year By Steven Henshaw Monday August 11, 2014 Twenty-two people were shot, five fatally, in Reading through the first six months of 2014, a 57 percent increase from the previous year. But Police Chief William M. Heim downplayed the significance of the jump from the total of 14 shooting victims through the same period last year. He said the long-term trend shows serious crime, including shootings, has decreased steadily over the last two decades in Reading. Heim said year-to-year or month-to-month comparison are not very meaningful. Thats why we look at multiyear trends and not just yearly trends, he said. The Uniform Crime Report figures that state police collect and make available online do not include shootings of people as a separate category. The figures provided by Heim reflect how many persons were actually shot. Some shooting incidents involved multiple victim. There were a total of 39 shooting victims, including seven murder victims, in 2013. That was the fewest shootings since the city began systematically tracking shootings of people as a statistical category in 2000. For the decade ending in 2010, the figures show the city averaged nearly 65 people shot per year. As part of a crime-reduction strategy implemented in 2007, Heim emphasized putting police in the right places at the right times, guided by crime-mapping software. Weve come a significant way in creating a safer city, Heim said. No agency keeps track of shootings for Berks County as a whole, District Attorney John T. Adams said. Two shootings outside the city this year have made headlines. One was the countys first homicide of the year and remains unsolved Louisa T. Krenzel, 48, was found shot to death in the driveway of her Pike Township home on Jan. 17. On June 17, an off-duty police office shot a man on Route 61 in Ontelaunee Township, critically wounding him, after the officer was allegedly attacked by a group of men following a road-rage incident. Adams ruled the shooting by Ryan Brobst, a part-time officer with the Fleetwood and Hamburg police departments, as justified.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 04:09:37 +0000
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