By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Violent crime across the city fell for a second straight year, dropping by nearly 20% in 2023, according to new data released Wednesday by the Rockford Police Department.
Property crimes — including burglary, theft, arson, shoplifting and vandalism — rose nearly 3% last year. That marks the third straight annual increase, the data shows.
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Rockford Police Chief Carla Redd, along with Mayor Tom McNamara and Jennifer Cacciapaglia, who leads the Mayor’s Office of Domestic and Community Violence Prevention, held a news conference at the District 3 police headquarters to provide the annual crime statistics.
There were 20 homicides in 2023, an increase from 15 a year earlier and down from 24 in 2021 and a record 36 in 2020, when the murder rate spiked across the country.
Aggravated assaults fell nearly 20%, the number of people shot fell 30%, shots fired dropped 31% and robberies fell about 7%. The city provided data on crime categories that are part of the FBI’s uniform crime reporting.
“This is something that the entire community needs to be celebrating with us,” Redd said. “When I tell you the men and women of the Rockford Police Department are truly working day-in and day-out on decreasing the crime in Rockford, those numbers are reflective of that.”
Police made an arrest in 17 of the 20 homicides last year for an 85% solve rate. Redd said she couldn’t recall the last time there was a clearance rate that high. The rate was 53% in 2022 and 42% in 2021.
Redd credited increases in technology such as ShotSpotter gunfire-detection systems, automated license-plate readers and surveillance cameras, as well as receiving information from the public.
“We are an intelligence-led agency,” Redd said. “Our detectives, our officers, we often know who the individuals are within our community that are responsible for violent crime. Those individuals, we know you you are and it’s no secret that we’re coming looking for you.”
Domestic violence accounted for roughly 44% of all violent crime in the city last year. That was up from 38% in 2022.
Cacciapaglia said the increase is a reflection of more people coming forward to report domestic violence. In 2018, two years before the city opened its Family Peace Center to serve survivors of domestic and sexual violence, the percentage was about 29%.
“We expect that number to go up if we continue to do things correctly because – to be clear, to be crystal clear – not everyone who is experiencing domestic or sexual violence in Rockford, Illinois, is yet engaging with our law enforcement or with our criminal justice system,” Cacciapaglia said. “The only way that we can get to recovery and restoration for our survivors and their children – to address the overall violent crime rate and youth violent crime rate – is by bringing this issue into the light.”
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The Family Peace Center has served 1,800 survivors of domestic or sexual violence, including 440 children, since opening in 2020.
McNamara said the city’s public safety strategy is twofold: It must enforce the laws and catch criminals to stop crime now while supporting programs that stop the cycle of violence in the future by addressing trauma and providing economic opportunity.
Some of those programs include a workforce development initiative that partnered young adults with Pastor Albert “Tank” Weathers to learn construction trades. That program led to 4 miles of sidewalk being built in the last two years and an additional 2 miles will be built this year while young adults gain work experience for future careers.
He also highlighted Rockford Promise, which pays full-college tuition for Rockford Public Schools graduates to attend Northern Illinois University if they maintain a 3.0 grade-point average in high school. About 60% of people who earned the scholarships are first-generation college students, McNamara said.
“Many people don’t have hope, and when you don’t have hope why are you continuing to go to school? Why are you continuing to work hard on your grades,” McNamara said. “We know we are having an impact with hope and opportunities.”
He noted that while property crimes are up for a third straight year, they are down nearly 29% from 5,761 in 2016.
There were 17 traffic fatalities on city roadways in 2023, including four pedestrians who were struck and killed. Two of the pedestrians were killed in hit-and-run crashes. City police, meanwhile, issued 10,615 traffic citations compared to 10,699 a year ago.
Auto thefts remained high, increasing 1.5%. Auto thefts have been at near record highs across the country, which has been blamed in part by social media trends that show how to take advantage of a defect to steal certain Kia and Hyundai vehicles.
“We’re working with a lot of our local dealerships in town to combat some of the issues we’re seeing,” Redd said.
Police are recruiting now to add more officers to their ranks. The department has an authorized strength of 302, but is about 20 officers short of that mark.
Staffing issues have hampered police departments across the country since 2020, which several agency leaders have blamed on the twofold hit of the coronavirus pandemic and increased criticism of police that came after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota.
The Rockford Police Department last added five officers in January, bringing its total up to 282.
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas