On Thursday, April 12, 2018 Davenport Police Chief, Paul Sikorski joined WQAD on Good Morning Quad Cities for our Breakfast With… segment.
He sat down with Jesyka Dereta at Tommy’s Café in Davenport to talk about the recent increase in shots fired calls and juvenile crime in the city.
Chief Sikorski says his department is stepping up the number investigations when it comes to shots fired calls in the city. The department has a new plan in place that involves a lieutenant and county and federal attorneys to investigate gang related shots fired calls.
“We are focusing on day to day shift to shift specific activity. We are focusing on specific people, places and residences and we are focusing on drafting more search warrants,” said Skiorski. “Since January of this year, we have served seven search warrants, arrested 26 people and ceased 28 firearms related to shots fired incidents.”
The Davenport Police Department is also shifting its focus when it comes to combating the recent increase in juvenile crimes in Davenport.
The department has been collaborating with other law enforcement agencies and juvenile court services to create stiffer punishments for juvenile crimes.
Law enforcement is also working on collaborating with other local law enforcement agencies and juvenile court services to create stiffer punishments for crimes like car thefts. Since the collaboration, there has been a 200% increase in prosecuting stiffer punishments for these crimes since 2016.
“A great percentage is these cars are being stolen by youth. In 2016 most of those were charged with joy riding and now we are working in charging the punishment to a charge in vehicle theft,” said Sikorski.
Officers are working on educating youth at a grassroots level to try and prevent juvenile crimes from happening in the first place.
“This isn’t our youth of the Quad Cities. We have awesome kids in our area and these crimes are a small percentage but that percentage that is creating dangerous situations in our communities and we need to put a stop to it,” added Sikorski. “A common question is ‘why don’t you lock them up’ and that does happen but as a system we need to figure out a way to prevent it from not happening again.”
Chief Sikorski says when someone is convicted of a crime, there is a 68% chance of re-offending.
To see past Breakfast With… segments, click here.
Thank you to Tommy’s Café for hosting this week’s Breakfast With…