Lt. Gerard Slattery, head of the Youngstown police vice and neighborhood response units, answers questions Thursday about an initiative the police department carried out last year with assistance from other agencies to reduce crime. At right are some of the partner agencies involved in the initiative — highway patrol, sheriff’s office and FBI.....Staff photo / Ed Runyan

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown Police Department and its partners are renewing their efforts this spring, summer and fall to stop crime in high-crime areas.

The partners are the Ohio State Highway Patrol, FBI, Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office and other agencies.

Police Chief Carl Davis said the “Impact Initiative” will “focus on areas that have experienced elevated levels of crime related to narcotics and gun violence.”

He said the partnership with OSHP, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, Ohio Adult Parole Authority and the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office is effective.

“By working together, these agencies can share resources, intelligence and expertise to effectively combat crime,” the chief said.

“I can boldly stand here today and tell you that the overall crime in the city of Youngstown is down, and that includes homicides, and I believe this is a direct result of the initiatives we have in place.”

STARTS NOW

Thursday marked the return of the Impact initiative.

“This initiative is a collaboration and partnership of all of the aforementioned agencies. The intent of this initiative is to have a positive impact on traffic safety, overall community safety, while interdicting community safety,” Davis said.

“Officers will focus on areas that have experienced elevated levels of crime related to narcotics and gun violence. As we witnessed two days ago, there are a lot of individuals who believe carrying a gun and using a gun to resolve conflicts is the answer to their problems,” he said.

“Our citizens deserve better than that. So during this initiative you will see a high volume of police activity in many of your neighborhoods. As we look to take more guns off of our streets, our goal is to interrupt criminal enterprise, our goal is to interrupt where they gather, our goal is to return peace and quality of life.

“We will do this in a fair and procedurally just matter. At the same time we are going to be strong in going after that criminal element. And if you as a citizen have an encounter with one of our officers, I assure you that they will treat you with respect as they do their job,” he said.

HOW IT HELPS

He and Lt. Gerard Slattery, head of the Vice and Neighborhood Response Unit, presented a video showing three examples from last summer where the partnership led to arrests that might not have been possible without state troopers using aircraft to track fleeing suspects.

Officers and troopers were working the initiative when “a rolling gunbattle” took place that led to individuals fleeing on foot through the neighborhood and being captured. A trooper can be heard directing officers on the ground to the location where a man was running, before the man gave up and was taken into custody. Two weapons were recovered.

Another video showed a man being arrested by officers on the ground in an apartment complex on the East Side, after a trooper provided information that helped locate him.

“He though he got away from us,” Slattery said. “However, we were able to converge on him. He also had a gun in the trunk of that vehicle,” Slattery said.

Slattery said the initiative, as it was carried out last year, “really went well. The partnerships we have with the FBI, U.S. Marshals, the sheriff’s office and especially (the state patrol), they were out there with us every day. They supply air support. It is absolutely fantastic.”

He said prosecutors have “really stepped up the prosecutions on all of these gun charges we are getting.”

Sgt. Ray Santiago of the public affairs unit of the highway patrol said this initiative “is going to be data driven” for high volumes of violent crimes. It is “the latest saturation event … in partnership with the governor’s office over the past couple of years.”

DeWine directed Andy Wilson, director of the governor’s office of public safety, to provide services for this type of initiative, Santiago said.

He said the air unit will be active “assisting ground units with observing and identifying active crimes, as well as anything in the way of foot pursuits or vehicle pursuits. We can increase the safety of how those pursuits take place.”

INVESTIGATIONS

The patrol’s Office of Investigations in the Warren District Office also will assist with long-term investigations. The patrol did 459 traffic stops last year. As a result, there were 59 criminal arrests, 38 of those felonies, 38 drug cases and 11 weapons cases.

There were 1,026 grams of cocaine seized last year, 295 grams of crack cocaine, 24 grams of heroin and fentanyl, Santiago said.

Mayor Jamael Tito Brown said DeWine called him earlier this week when two shooting incidents took place about the same time in Youngstown.

Capt. Jason Simon, head of the police department’s detective division, said violence in Youngstown frequently comes down to “individuals who don’t know how to resolve conflict any other way but to take it to a violent extreme.”

He said that issue requires more than police officers. “What we want is for those parents, those school teachers, everyone who is invested in a child’s life to teach them and mentor them in conflict resolution early on,” he said.

A burst of violence Tuesday led to a 22-year-old man being shot and killed in a dispute with another male on Tod Lane on the North Side and other incidents, including a new shooting late Wednesday on Pointview Avenue on the South Side that injured three people.

Slattery mentioned that homicides in the city are down and more than 100 guns were removed from the street, partly because of the Neighborhood Response Unit created by Davis. “That prevented some shootings.” The year before that, 138 guns were removed.

“In two years that the unit has been involved, it’s been like 250 guns removed from the streets,” Slattery said. “You’re not going to tell me we didn’t prevent some of the shootings” from happening.

erunyan@vindy.com