BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During the morning session of the May 2 Gainesville City Commission meeting, Gainesville Police Department (GPD) presented data from the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2024.

Interim Police Chief Nelson Moya began with GPD’s mission for 2024: violent crime (specifically gun-related violence), traffic safety, homeless outreach, and recruiting police officers. He said GPD currently has 47 vacancies for sworn officers.

GPD’s crime statistics for January 1 to March 31 of 2024 (Moya said the year in the slide is a typo) include five homicides, a 67% percent increase over the same quarter in 2023. Moya said there have been two additional homicides since March 31, so there have been seven homicides so far in the calendar year.

Rape incidents have decreased almost 40% from the first quarter of 2023, and robberies have increased 30%. Aggravated assaults have decreased about 3%. This results in an overall decrease of 3.5% in violent crimes. 

Under property crimes, burglaries have increased 52% since the first quarter of 2023, larcenies are down slightly, and auto thefts are up 12%, resulting in an overall increase of 5% in property crimes.

There was a decrease of 8% in stolen firearms in 2023 as compared to 2022; 20% fewer weapons (Moya said this includes “anything but firearms”) were recovered by law enforcement, 13.5% fewer shots were fired, 27.7% more people were shot, and 40% more people were killed in shootings (the slide says 30%, but an increase from 10 to 14 is 40%). Moya said there were 16 victims in the 14 homicide incidents.

Moya: “I’m looking for a pattern of decrease from this point forward.”

Regarding comparisons between the second quarter of FY24 and the first quarter of FY24, Moya said, “I’ve seen these numbers ebb and flow; I’m looking for a pattern of decrease from this point forward.”

Comparing the two most recent quarters, stolen firearms decreased by 56%, firearms recovered by law enforcement increased by 17%, weapons (non-firearms) recovered by law enforcement increased by 7%, the number of persons shot decreased by 41%, the number of homicide victims increased by 67%, and the number of suicides dropped by 17%. 

Gun Violence Unit

Later in the presentation, Lt. Lonnie Scott, Jr., announced that the Gun Violence Initiative has now become the Gun Violence Unit under the Criminal Investigations Division. He said the data in the slide above come from the most recent quarter. Scott said Moya had instructed the unit to emphasize “these juvenile checks – people who are on some kind of probation or home detention, to make sure they’re home. Because if we can make sure that they’re home, then hopefully it’ll drive down crime.”

Scott Jr: Glock switches are “becoming pretty commonplace here.”

Scott said the Gun Violence Unit has partnered with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office and federal agencies, and in one of those details, four firearms were seized, two arrests were made, and two sworn complaints were filed. Scott said that Glock switches, which convert pistols into automatic weapons, are “becoming pretty commonplace here.” Scott said there are also conversion devices that turn rifles into automatic weapons. 

Traffic fatalities

Traffic fatalities were below the trend in 2023, with 20 fatalities as compared to 24 the previous year, but Sergeant Lynne Valdes with the Traffic Unit said she had just learned that there were eight in the January-March time period of 2024, compared to seven in the same quarter last year.

Valdes said that many people assume the driver is at fault when a pedestrian is hit by a vehicle, but pedestrians contributed to two of the eight fatalities so far this year. 

Co-responder team

Lt. Lisa Scott said the co-responder team responded to 630 calls for service, 276 of which were related to mental health; 13 people were diverted from jail to receive other services. 21% of the calls were for homeless individuals. Scott said 85% of the calls for service had a current mental health and/or substance use diagnosis. 

Recruiting

Lt. Marquita Brown with the Personnel Services Division said GPD has been recruiting as far south as Miami. She said that of 96 applications for sworn positions, GPD processed “maybe 51 of those, and we only hired seven.” She said the agency has 30 applications pending, and they are hopeful they will achieve their target of hiring 30 sworn officers this year.

Brown said the department has changed its hiring standards, reducing the minimum age from 21 to 19 years old and reducing the educational requirement from a two-year degree to a high school diploma or GED.

In response to a question from Commissioner Reina Saco about the low percentage of hires relative to the applications, Brown said, “I can tell you what people mostly fail, and it will be polygraphs.” Saco told her, “Just keep it up, I guess – pull from all the other counties. Just steal from them.”