Calls for service, major crimes up slightly in 2023, but number of homicides gets Yates’ attention in annual report

QUINCY — When asked what jumped out at him when looking at the annual report for the Quincy Police Department for 2023, Chief Adam Yates didn’t hesitate.

Of the nearly 30,000 calls for service made last year, Yates pointed to three in particular — the murder of Becky Bliefnick on Feb. 24, the shooting death of Dana Lawton on May 24 and the shooting death of Mackenzie Bullard on Oct. 11.

“We had three homicides in 2023, and we didn’t have any the year before, so that’s a 300 percent increase in homicides,” he said. “Those are situations where folks are losing their lives. They are a drain on resources, and they obviously have a tremendous impact on the community. Those types of investigations we want to try, as much as we can, to keep everyone safe, but when we have a homicide, that’s the worst kind of crime that we can have.”

Yates’ 27-page report was received and filed during Monday night’s Quincy City Council meeting.

Calls for service increased 6.8 percent from 27,847 in 2022 to 29,748 in 2023. The Major Index Crime Total increased 6.9 percent from 783 in 2022 to 837 in 2023.

For reporting purposes, the seven major crimes are categorized into two groups: violent

crime (including murder, criminal sexual assault, aggravated assault/battery, and

robbery) and property crime (including burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft). The

total major index crime is an aggregate of the total violent crime and property crime.

Yates didn’t see the increase in calls for service to be significant.

“The number of calls for service fluctuates from year to year,” he said. “I was surprised by how low the number was for the year prior, so it doesn’t surprise me. Back in the early 2000s, we were having anywhere from 45,000 to 50,000 calls per year. We have seen the calls for service go down steadily over the last five years.”

City crime comparison in 2023

The number of criminal arrests declined 13.94 percent from 4,492 in 2022 to 3,866 in 2023. The number of traffic citations increased by less than 1 percent from 3,099 in 2022 to 3,128 in 2023. However, the number of driving under the influence (DUI) citations increased 221.7 percent from 23 in 2022 to 74 in 2023.

“I think maybe that (DUI) number has a little bit to do with staff,” Yates said. “Our staffing levels were getting closer to that full staff point, which we did reach in December. In 2022, we were still having some of the side effects from COVID and low staffing. Now we have more proactive patrols, traffic stops and traffic enforcement. Having better staffing numbers gives us more time to do proactive.

“We would hope that as a society, we’re recognizing that DUIs are not acceptable. They’re completely preventable crimes. We’ll stay focused on those because they have a devastating impact on families.”

The number of property crimes increased 7.84 percent from 689 in 2022 to 743 in 2023. Burglaries dropped 39.52 percent from 124 in 2022 to 75 in 2023, but motor vehicle thefts rose 121.43 percent from 42 in 2022 to 93 in 2023 — a statistic that Yates believes has been corrected.

“Keep in mind that we’re looking at 2023 numbers,” he said. “We had several (motor vehicle thefts) at the beginning of this year, and then we launched our special investigations unit in April. I feel like we’ve made a significant dent in this type of activity.

“We had some particular targets who we had our eyes on. We made arrests on those. I think if you were to look over the last several months, our stolen vehicle numbers have dropped significantly. We had information that it was a particular group of individuals who were participating in this, and there was an individual who was the ringleader of that group. We focused efforts on getting that subject apprehended, and now that we have, we’ve seen a significant fall off in stolen vehicles.”

The number of traffic crashes decreased 6.26 percent from 975 in 2022 to 914 in 2023. Broadway was the most popular street for accidents to happen, with the intersection at 36^th tops with 5. The intersection of Park Place and 12^th Street had four accidents, as did Fourth and Broadway. 30^th and Broadway had three accidents, and there were two accidents each on Broadway at the intersections of 48^th Street, 52^nd Street, Eighth Street and 12^th Street.

The number of arrests related to traffic accidents went from 833 in 2022 to 881 to 2023, and the number of warnings increased from 652 in 2022 to 933 in 2023.

The police department began installation of license plate readers during the week of June 19, 2023. Nineteen cameras were active by the end of the year. The cameras aided solving nine cases in 2023 — two hit-and-runs, two frauds, four stolen vehicles and a home invasion/sex assault.

Yates said not to read too much into crime statistics because of the ebb and flow from year to year. 

“We don’t have a lot of control over the crimes that are committed,” he said. “You would like to think that we deter crime, but if people are just committed to going out and doing something wrong, they’re going to do that.

“What we want to do is to be out engaging with the community. We want to be responding to calls for service. We want the nefarious actors in our community to understand that if they’re committing crimes, their crime is going to be investigated, and if we can develop probable cause, we’re going to arrest them for the crimes that they committed, and then the State’s Attorney’s Office is going to hold them accountable. That’s really all we can do. We can just do the best job we can and hope the numbers go down next year.”