Elmira Police release first “community crime survey” results

ELMIRA, N.Y. (WETM) — The Elmira Police Department released the results of a survey on Thursday taken primarily by Elmira residents, with 43% saying they’ve been a victim of a crime at some point in the city.

“I don’t believe that we’ve ever done a survey here at our police department for crime and other related things in the city,” said Investigator Tristan Hillman. For our job in the GIVE program is to do community outreach, so it was my idea come up with a crime survey to put out to the community. The GIVE program stands for “Gun Involved Violence Elimination” initiative.

New anti-gun violence initiative in Elmira

The survey asked residents 10 questions, answered by around 500 people. Out of 512 people, 455 answered that they were residents of Elmira, 89%, with 57 people, 11%, answering that they were not.

When asking residents about what concerns them the most in the city revolving around crime, the 500 people were asked to pick their top three issues out of seven choices. 61% of the responses said that shooting incidents were the most concerning issue. Followed by violent crimes, robbery, assault, menacing, and homicide, at 59%, and property crimes at 55%.

“I would say that’s a majority of our biggest issues here, so I’m not shocked to see that,” said Investigator Hillman. “But it’s also things we’re working on combating, and numbers are starting to go down. We’ve seen a lot more shooting in previous years around this time than we’re experiencing this year. I think we’re almost at a record low number of shootings and gunshot calls than we’ve had in the previous four years. The numbers are trending downwards.”

51% of people disagreed or strongly disagreed that shootings and other violent incidents have decreased over the last year. 31% stayed neutral. 19% agreed, 5% strongly agreed.

53% said Elmira’s South Side has the most crime, followed by the East Side at 39%. The West side received 8% of the votes.

When asked how people perceive the services of the Elmira Police Department, 23% said extremely well. 36% said somewhat well. 22% said neither well or not well. 11% said not very well. 8% said not well at all.

“With extremely well and somewhat well, that’s 59%, that’s a majority of the votes, which I would say is promising and positive,” said Investigator Hillman. “I would say those who have had the not well or not very well, I guess we apologize if you had a bad police interaction, but we do try to make sure our community interacts positively with our police officers.”

“I would say the number of 80% who say they would contact the police is pretty huge, I’m honestly kind of shocked by that,” Investigator Hillman added. “People will talk to us to some extent, but the full cooperation is kind of lacking.”

When asked what additional policing efforts people would like to see, drug crime intervention topped the list at 60%. Gun crime intervention came in at 53%. 48% said vacant residence checks. Undercover efforts came in at 38%. Face-to-face interactions at 33%. Foot patrols at 30%. Bicycle patrols at 25%. Traffic stops at 21%. Business checks at 10%.

“I would say that the drug efforts that the community wishes to see and the gun crime efforts kind of go hand in hand. Usually you see one or the other. So that’s something that we can look at and we’ll try to tackle going forward,” Hillman said. “With the vacant residences and those kind of checks, undercover efforts, we do see a lot of vagrants that use illegal drugs, going into abandoned buildings and things like that, and causing a nuisance for community members. So that’s all things that we can start to incorporate with this.”

“Are there currently any foot patrols anywhere in the City?” asked reporter Nick Dubina.

“We don’t currently have official walking posts but every shift officers get out of their cars, walk around, check doors, make sure places are secure.”

“I think interacting with the public and members of the community is a huge part of this job,” Hillman said. If people are seeing officers out on foot, checking businesses and interacting with the public or out on bikes during a live event, the community gets to know the officers, and in turn would feel safer in their communities.”

You can view the full survey results and full interview with Investigator Hillman below:

Elmira-Police-Community-Crime-Survey-ResultsDownload

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