The city, once dubbed “Murdertown USA,” has seen a significant drop in homicide and violent crime numbers this year as its Democratic mayor officially refused to defund police.
The latest crime statistics from Wilmington, Delaware showed a 44 percent year-over-year decrease in homicides in 2022 from 25 to 14 and a 24 percent decrease in shooting victims from 114 to 87.
A 14 percent drop was also recorded in all crimes in the first part, which include murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and theft, according to the latest city statistics Sept. 18.
Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki acknowledged that there were some anti-police department protests when police were called to defund police following the death of George Floyd, but said his officers enjoy broadly good community support , and said he would “not consider” withdrawing funding from the prosecution.
“To me, we have one of the best police departments in America across the board,” the mayor told Fox News Digital.
“People in our community appreciate the work of the police. Anytime we have police misconduct, the chief is pretty quick to sort those people out.
Wilmington earned the nickname “Murdertown USA” in 2014 amid sky-high rates of violence that marked it as one of the nation’s most crime-ridden areas, especially considering Delaware’s comparatively low crime rate compared to other states.
The latest crime statistics from Wilmington, Delaware showed a 44 percent decrease in homicides in 2022 from the year before to 14 from 25 and a 24 percent decrease in shooting victims from 114 to 87. A 14 percent decrease was also seen in all parts -1 crimes recorded in total
Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki acknowledged that there were some anti-police department protests when police were called to defund police following the death of George Floyd, but said his officers enjoy broadly good community support , and said he would “not consider” withdrawing funding from the prosecution
Theories about the driving factors behind Wilmington’s historically high crime rates vary, but many have pointed to significant levels of poverty and proximity to the major cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia, both notorious for violent crime but located in different states.
Purzycki said crime took a shark surge in late 2019 and into the pandemic, which he described as “disastrous for us and cities across the country because it has closed our courts.”
“Judges were reluctant to put people in jail,” he said, adding that “the system completely collapsed” before recovering towards the end of 2021 as pandemic restrictions eased and the Delaware General Assembly passed legislation increasing bail for passed some crimes.
The mayor commended the police for the work they have done in Wilmington and also claimed that implementing an initiative to prosecute gun crime offenders was instrumental in reducing crime numbers.
The encouraging decline in homicide and violent crime rates in Wilmington comes as retired police chiefs blamed the Defund the Police campaign for rising crime elsewhere in the country.
The movement gained momentum after the death of George Floyd – a black man murdered by a white police officer in May 2020 – and urged city officials to divert funds away from law enforcement and into alternative forms of social support.
But the campaign had dangerous “ripple effects” across the sector, the former top officers said, causing a dramatic increase in wait times for victims of vicious crimes and causing morale to plummet to the lowest levels in decades.
It comes as crime-ridden cities like New York City and Portland, Oregon, have downsized staffing levels in the wake of the campaign.
Retired Police Chief Jeff Rasche of Greenfield, Indiana, told Fox News Digital that there will be longer response times when officers are few and far between, and when officers have to work overtime there is less time for much-needed training.
Retired Police Chief Jeff Rasche (left) said when officers are thin on the ground there are longer response times and when they have to work overtime there is less time for much-needed training. Retired Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead (right) said morale was the lowest he’d seen in his 30 years on the job – and said it was because officers felt it was their job been demonized and they are worried about being criminally charged
The movement, which led to violent clashes with officials last year, caused the dangerous “ripple effects” across the sector, the former top officers said
Many analysts attribute the spike in homicides to the social upheaval brought about by pandemic lockdowns and the breakdown in police-community relations
Another retired police chief, Jeff Halstead of Fort Worth, Texas, said morale was the lowest he’d seen in his 30 years on the job – and said it was because officers felt it was their job been demonized.
“I speak to law enforcement on a daily basis. And in today’s world, their biggest problem is recruiting,” Halstead said.
“And what you’re hearing is the same drum being banged: How are we going to get through this? And what steps are we going to take to get our staff back?’
Meanwhile, a report from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research found that the 30 percent increase in homicide rates across the country during the Covid pandemic in the Democratic-leaning states, where the “defund the police” movement was most pronounced, was felt more strongly.
Examining data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other sources, covering 290 urban counties, home to 58 percent of the US population, found that Republican-leaning areas fared better than others in the killing spree.
“We find some evidence that the country’s political culture played a role, with increases in homicides tending to be less in GOP-prone counties than in Democratic counties,” the study said.
This suggests that local police forces have deterred more crimes in areas where they had greater public support, in contrast to such liberal centers as Portland, Oregon, where officers resigned en masse in 2020, amid widespread criticism and often violent racial protests.
A report by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research states that Republican-leaning areas fared better than others in the 2020 killing spree
Protesters in New York and other cities have lobbied for cuts in police funding over the 2020 police killings of unarmed black men, despite new research suggesting more support for officers is helping keep homicide rates under control
“Some cities have done a better job of managing than others,” analyst Christos Makridis told .
“GOP-leaning counties have slightly more enforcement or support for the police, and that brings with it a whole range of activities that help the police feel comfortable — that’s certainly a theory.”
The states with the sharpest increases in homicide rates in 2020 included New York, Pennsylvania, California, Montana and South Dakota, according to the Pew Research Center, but Makridis says his study is more detailed because it goes down to the county level.
The researchers also weighed other popular explanations for the homicide spike, but also found no link to higher rates of gun sales, which also skyrocketed in 2020, and areas with higher Covid-19 infection rates.
According to FBI data, firearms are used in about three quarters of homicides.
“A lot of people like to point out the problem of gun ownership… There’s not a really strong connection,” Makridis said.
“These issues are so complex … it’s easy to point the finger at them.”