GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — Shootings and homicides are up in Green Bay this year, and by a lot.
Green Bay has seen more than twice the number of shootings and homicides this year compared to last. There have been 53 shootings and six homicides since the start of the year. The numbers are alarming to Green Bay Police Commander Kevin Warych.
“What we’ve seen in 2020 is an anomaly,” Warych told WTAQ. “The alarms are going off.”
Driving the rise? In part, it’s due to a group of around two dozen linked individuals engaged in a number of petty disputes that police have been dealing with for months.
“When we use the analytics and we look at what happened, study the motives, and try to identify the people involved…a lot of the same names show up in a lot of these crimes,” Warych said Wednesday.
Police have launched a task force specifically to deal with that group, and it’s keeping all options on the table.
“We’ve enlisted the help of our community partners,” said Warych. “The traditional policing of just trying to catch people responsible and throwing them in jail, hoping the crime won’t happen again is not working. There have got to be different options.”
The task force has seen some success but police are keeping their noses to the grindstone in hopes of a less violent 2021.
Fifteen detectives and four patrol officers have been working on the task force since October.
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