The Kiwanis Club learned more about the crime rates in Hopkinsville Thursday with a visit from Captain Adam Smith with the Hopkinsville Police Department.
Captain Smith has served on the police department for 12 years and says a lot of things have changed in that time, including the ever-evolving crime rate and incident trends throughout the city. He says crime all of types went up in 2021 as compared to 2020, but he thinks that was to be expected as the world moved past the COVID-19 pandemic.
Smith says while crime was up overall last year, it’s still in line with a ten-year decline.
Violent crime in the first part of 2022 has stayed fairly steady compared to 2021, and Smith says they’re constantly working to figure out ways to bring those incidents down.
A good portion of the current gun violence and shots fired incidents happening in the city are in relation to juveniles, according to Smith, who says they intend to do outreaches to local youth to try and identify the problem and address it.
Smith also urges citizens to make sure your vehicles are locked when you leave them, and to make sure you take any firearms out of the vehicle and put them into a secure location, as a large number of guns are being stolen out of cars and making their ways into the wrong hands.