Dover PD reactives their Street Crimes Unit

Due to the recent spike in crime Delaware’s capital city, Dover Police are re-implementing their street crimes unit.

“In the city of Dover we’ve had a spike in violent crime. The amount of shootings and murders that we’ve had in a short period of time is unprecedented for the city. Because of that we had to sit down and strategically think of a plan of how we can combat this.” Said Lieutenant Jason Pires of Dover PD.

After a number of shootings last year Dover PD initially implemented the street crimes unit on a temporary basis, spanning from November to January.

Lieutenant Jason Pires says the unit was working and made several arrests.

But since the unit was activated on a temporary basis and put a strain on resources it was then put on hold.

Lt. Pires said, “The issue we’re having now is manpower to put into this unit.” and “After assessing some of the violent crimes that occurred in the city we decided to pull from other resources within the department to bring this unit back.”

According to Lt. Pires, shootings like one this past Friday in the Capital Green development are exactly what the five member team will focus on.

“Their whole function is to go into the high crime areas and deal with violent repeat offenders. They’re gonna target specifically guns and drugs that’s gonna be the primary focus of this unit.”

This time around, we’re told that the unit will exist permanently.

Lieutenant Pires also tells 47 ABC that funding for the additional officers and the street crimes unit will come out of the police department’s budget.