GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – It’s been about a month since Green Bay Police met with the community in a forum to discuss issues of gun violence and a swift sequence of shots-fired incidents.
The community shared ideas as the department explained their own plans for addressing the rising concern over the issue in neighborhoods across the city.
“We’ve seen some pretty amazing work by both our detectives and our patrol division with the arrest of four individuals who we feel are probably some of the main instigators or those that were actually doing the shootings,” said Captain Ben Allen. “Things really calmed down after that, after the arrests were made.”
Police did respond to a few shots-fired calls on New Year’s Eve. Allen says while some were celebratory in nature from what investigators were told, another four people were arrested for pulling triggers that night.
So what is the department doing to tackle the issue, or prevent it from escalating in the future?
“We have a posting for a violence response team, which will be out in neighborhoods addressing these very issues. So that posting is up internally, and we’ll be initially assigning two officers to that team,” Allen told WTAQ News. “They’ll work closely with our our current community police division officers, but they will be specifically working on these shooting and neighborhood violence-type issues.”
Green Bay Police are working with trainers from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform this week to for a violence assessment for the city.
They’re also utilizing a NIBIN machine, which helps investigators analyze casings from rounds that have been fired and determine if the guns related to those casings are linked to other investigations. The NIBIN machine provides quicker results than a typical investigation, which would have the casings sent somewhere like the state crime lab to be analyzed.
“Oftentimes, we get called after the fact and all we find is shell casings and nothing else. But having the machine right here, we’re able to get information from those shell casings right away,” Allen said. “Get it back to where it started – from when it was purchased, to who it was sold to, whether it was involved in other incidents.”
However, Allen says it’s important to get ahead of potential crime, rather than simply reacting to shots being fired.
“It’s really shifting that mindset for law enforcement as well, that there’s more to this on the front end that we can address so we’re not always chasing our tail with investigations,” Allen said.
Allen adds that police can only do so much. That’s why the department is asking for the community’s help in making an impact on the lives of young people, and to help them understand better ways to handle disputes.
“We’re talking about violence interrupters, engaging members of the community to assist with getting to these youth that are causing some of these issues and are involved in some of these shootings,” Allen said. “It’s really trying to get on the front end. So when we find out there’s disputes amongst individuals or groups of individuals, kids in school or whatever the issue may be, it’s getting our violence interrupters in front of these individuals before shooting started happening…Talking through what the issues are and identifying that this isn’t a big issue, let’s not go shooting each other over this, and let’s work through this.”
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