Julie E. GreeneThe Herald-Mail
Hagerstown Police Chief Paul Kifer acknowledged this week that the city had a "rough couple of weeks" recently with two homicides and even more shootings.
One homicide or one shooting is too many, Kifer said.
Kifer talked about the shootings and homicides that occurred in late July and early August during interviews with The Herald-Mail at National Night Out at Fairgrounds Park on Tuesday evening and in a phone interview on Wednesday.
On Tuesday evening, Kifer said his only solace was that none of those incidents were related to each other. There was no actionable intelligence pointing local police to something about to happen.
"I cannot control the contemporaneous, spontaneous things that happen," Kifer said. "That's a societal issue. That's much bigger than any police department can solve," he said Wednesday.
"But we're trying," Kifer said. That involves working with community partners, including nonprofits.
There have been four homicides in the city this year, three of them shootings.
Through Aug. 6 this year, there have been 26 shootings, Kifer said. That stat accounts for incidents where there was evidence of a shooting, whether that was injury, property damage or found shell casings.
That compares, during the same roughly seven-month stretch, to 28 shootings in 2023, 36 in 2022 and 13 in 2021, Kifer said. Kifer said he believed the lower figure in 2021 was due to a decline in crime during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the peak 2022 figure was related to a lot of crime coming out of the pandemic.
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Crime prevention is long term
Kifer said he believes crime prevention starts with getting to children early and helping families to have better values.
"The prevention side is long term," he said.
Many things can go into someone getting involved in crime and the idea is to get to families in need before a child goes down the wrong path, Kifer said.
He cited Ending Needless Violence With Our Youth (ENVY) as one city initiative with a coalition of community partners to help youths.
ENVY held its first invitation-only basketball league for middle-school age youths last fall and will have another one this autumn. Participants are referred by Washington County Public Schools staff.
Kifer said there were some big success with the program last year including youths confiding in their coaches about help they and their families needed. He cited one instance where a family was dealing with food issues.
Partners worked to get resources to the family not only in the short term, but also to help the family figure out what to do so family members didn't need to worry about where food was coming from in the future.
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Trying to get guns off the street
"We're doing our damnedest to take as many illegal guns off the street as we can," Kifer said Wednesday. That includes four guns that were confiscated on Tuesday.
That work includes patrol officers, detectives, officers serving warrants and the multi-agency Narcotics Task Force, Kifer said.
If someone wants to turn in a gun, they can go to Hagerstown Police headquarters at 50 N. Burhans Blvd. Leave the unloaded gun in the trunk, separate from ammo, and notify an officer in the lobby. Do not bring the gun into the police department, Kifer said.
It is illegal to fire a gun within city limits, including target practice, Kifer said.
Kifer spoke about lifestyle choices and people walking around with guns, pulling them out to resolve arguments in some cases.
"It makes no sense to me. In years past, people would get into a fist fight and they're fighting it out. Ours calls were for assaults," he said.
Now two guys go at it and someone pulls out a gun.
"It's unfortunate," he said.
Referring to the shootings in recent weeks, Kifer said those happened in different parts of the city.
The shootings included incidents on East Washington Street, Jonathan Street, Jefferson Street and at Washington Garden Apartments off Security Road. The shootings on East Washington Street on July 18 and on Jonathan Street on Aug. 1 were homicides, and one person was shot in the Jefferson Street incident.
When there's an uptick of violent crime in a certain area, police can focus efforts on that area. But Kifer said the recent incidents didn't lend themselves to that, being so spread out.
"Policing is largely reactionary," he said.
At least one house was struck by gunfire during both the July 18 fatal shooting on West Washington Street and the July 28 shooting on Jefferson Street, Kifer said.
The Washington Street shooting occurred shortly before 1 p.m. in a high traffic area for pedestrians and traffic.
Kifer said there also were a lot of people around during the Jonathan Street shooting.
"Very lucky" and "grateful" that "unintended targets" weren't injured, Kifer said.
