LIMA, Ohio (WLIO) — City and police officials say a collaboration among community partners is producing positive results in the effort to reduce crime in Lima.
The city and Lima Police Department are celebrating an accomplishment that has not happened in decades: Lima has gone 13 consecutive months without a homicide.
Police Chief Curtis Hile called the milestone quite an accomplishment for Lima. He said the department remains focused on continuing to reduce crime in multiple areas, because one crime is too many.
Police Chief Curtis Hile called the milestone quite an accomplishment for Lima.
“And we use the data to drive where we put those resources. So when we can see when something is there, a trend or something's starting to happen or we monitor social media and we see that there's something that may be happening in our community this weekend. We can call those resources. We know they'll answer the phone and we know they're going to be here so we can work together to keep this community safe,” said Chief Curtis Hile, Lima Police Department.
Mayor Sharetta Smith said community safety requires cooperation among multiple organizations and individuals.
“Community safety is not a one person, one department, one organization responsibility. It really takes all of the community working together. We know as a community it is our job to make sure that we provide safe spaces, that we provide opportunities for individuals and I really think it is the collaboration of all of those organizations and all of that work with all of us working together that has helped drive down crime and have us at this point to where we've not had an homicide here in the city of Lima in over a year,” said Mayor Sharetta Smith, City of Lima.
Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson congratulated the Lima community on its efforts to decrease total crime by 36% over the last three years.
“The new generation of law enforcement understands the concept of intelligence based policing, that it really is a small number of bad actors who are causing the majority of the problems. So, we need to focus our resources on those bad actors. You also see a lot of movement towards prevention. The best way to deal with crime is to stop the crime before it ever happens. So, you don't have a victim, and you don't have a loss. So, you see a lot of efforts in that space. Really starting again at the community level, working with kids and all the way up,” said AG Andy Wilson, State of Ohio.
Hile said police have used crime data to identify where resources need to be devoted.
“We've been able to to narrow down like the Attorney General said, who we need to be looking for and who we need to focus on. And we're going to continue to do that. Um but you know to see the robbery numbers up and to see the motor vehicle theft numbers up, um you know we we got to focus on that too,” added Hile.
The city of Lima provided additional crime data detailing trends in the community.
