Dover Police: Progress being made after recent spike in crime

DOVER, Del. – Police in Delaware’s capital city are working to crack down on crime and they say progress is being made. Since the year began, police have share information about almost a dozen different situations involving criminal activity.

“While the investigation is ongoing into a lot of the recent incidents in Dover, pertaining to the shootings in the shots fired that we’ve been responding to and handling, it is suspected that these people may have some connection to some of those incidents,” say Master Corporal Mark Hoffman with the Dover Police Department. “A lot of those incidents may be related in someway.”

This comes after a group of people were arrested and charged during an investigation into drug and gang activity on South New Street. “As a result of those we seized about two 40 caliber handguns, several airsoft replica firearms, marijuana, heroin and other drugs and made a total of nine arrests charging nine people with various crimes,” says Hoffman.

Investigators think these arrests hold clues to other shootings in the city. “So this was in direct response to some of those incidents and also as a preventative measure to hopefully prevent future incidents from occurring,” says Hoffman.

Police also tell 47 ABC, they’ve made headway in a shooting that happened on West North Street, Sunday morning. “In that incident multiple suspects entered the home and contacted the victim. They demanded property from the victim there was some type of altercation where the victim was shot multiple times.”

Officials say they’ll continue to focus on the areas that are known to be hot spots for crime. “The downtown area because it’s a known high crime area does have frequent patrols and proactive policing efforts continuing to happen there. They may have an increase due to the recent incidents that have occurred there despite our efforts,” says Hoffman.

But they say there’s only so much they can do because they also have other priorities across the city. “We have a population of almost 40,000 people and handle about 45,000 calls for service. While there is a main area for us to patrol we also have 40,000 citizens that need police protection as well.”

This all comes as the city is set to vote on its new police chief Monday night, behind closed doors. We’re told the candidate needs five affirmative votes to get approved. However when 47 ABC spoke to the mayor last week, he said he’s confident the candidate would get approval. If the final candidate is approved by the city, they’ll announce who that person is on late Tuesday afternoon Although they have been tight lipped about the candidate, the mayor says they believe in community policing which is something the city already supports.