Joliet Chief Wants You To Believe Violent Crime's At 45-Year Low

JOLIET, IL — Joliet does not feel like a safe city these days, does it?

Last Friday, while many people were heading out to lunch, some Joliet teenagers armed with semi-automatic guns spotted their rivals driving in the opposite direction on Republic Avenue, between Glenwood Avenue and West Jefferson Street, Joliet Police determined.

"At one point, occupants from both vehicles began firing rounds at each other resulting in the victim being shot while inside one of the vehicles," police announced this week.

About a dozen gunshots were fired in broad daylight, within walking distance from Amita Health Saint Joseph Medical Center. One of the bullets struck Joliet resident Jeremiah Frazier in the head. Frazier died at the hospital Sunday. The homicide victim was 17.

If the city of Joliet feels more like the Wild West these days, that's because it is. On Jan. 26, I reported the city of Joliet had 18 shooting victims in December. Eighteen. I uncovered the information as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.

To close out January, a 31-year-old Joliet man suffered life-threatening gunshot wounds outside of Andy & Sophie's Bar, in the 900 block of North Hickory Street, on Friday, Jan. 31.

But if you take Joliet Police Chief Al Roechner at his word, the city's violent crime rate is down, way down, down to 45-year record lows.

Roechner gave his presentation at last week's Joliet City Council meeting.

The timing of Roechner's remarks was not coincidental. It came just a couple weeks after Mayor Bob O'Dekirk announced the formation of a seven-member task force to address violent crime, drug overdose deaths and persistent homelessness across Joliet.

The mayor's task force includes veteran Joliet Police Detective Carlos Matlock, but Roechner and his command staff were not chosen.

So there was Roechner last week, showing slide after slide, suggesting Joliet's crime rates are at historic lows. According to Roechner, burglaries to businesses and residences, commonly called property crimes, dropped from 449 in 2018 to 256 in 2019, a 43-percent decline.

"This is an all-time low," Roechner announced. "The stats I have go back to 1975, and this is the lowest burglaries have ever been since that time frame."

And yet homicides were up substantially in 2019. Shootings across the city were also on the rise in 2019.

According to Roechner's slides, there were 19 homicides last year. There were 53 total homicides during the previous five-year span, an average of 10.6 per year, Patch found.

How did Roechner address the council in regard to the spike in homicides? He did it by creating a diversion for the mayor and council.

"Aggravated Assault minus 7 percent and Robbery minus 19 percent had substantial decreases from 2018 to 2019. Approximately 27 percent of homicide victims were involved domestic situations," his slide labeled Violent Crime Comparisons read.

In the alternative, the police chief's violent crime slide should have stated Joliet's 2019 homicide rate was the highest total of any point in the past six years, if not longer. (Roechner's homicide data only went back to 2014.)

"Of our high number of homicides, we did have 19 homicides in 2019 ... 12 of them were gang-related. Those are the most difficult to solve, but we do have suspects in each and every one of those homicides, we just need a little help from the public, as I've always been saying, please call us with any information you might have on one of those," Roechner told the council.

Another slide, labeled "Shooting Incidents," also wasn't reassuring. Joliet's number of gun homicides was the highest in at least the past six years with 15 deaths. The previous five-year average was 6.8 gun deaths, Joliet Patch found.

The number of aggravated battery shooting incidents was 59 in 2019, also the highest mark during the previous six years. The previous five-year average was 41.8, Joliet Patch found.

The number of aggravated gun discharges and reckless discharges totaled 213 in 2019, also the highest mark during the previous six years. The previous five-year average was 148.8, Patch found.

But if the objective of Roechner's city council presentation was to create his own headline, and I think it was, you have to give him credit for succeeding.

There are three main news media outlets covering Joliet and Will County: The Herald-News print newspaper, AM-1340 WJOL and Joliet Patch, which has the largest daily audience of them all.

Within hours of the council meeting, The Herald-News published its headline: "Police Chief Reports Dip In Violent Crime."

“Our total number of violent incidents were down, and our total number of property incidents were down,” The Herald-News quoted Roechner as telling the council.

On Monday, Roechner went on Joliet's news radio station. WJOL's online headline read, "Violent Crime In Joliet Second Lowest In 44 Years Yet Homicides Double In Joliet From 2018."

And yet less than 72 hours after Roechner gave his council presentation, two carloads of Joliet teenagers were on the prowl, clutching their pistols — at high noon on a Friday.

They were out looking for trouble in an area of Joliet that once seemed immune to violent crime — right outside St. Joe's hospital's emergency room, of all places.

By the time I got to the scene, the street was shut down to traffic. Joliet police evidence technicians had already placed a dozen little orange cones on the pavement in the 200 block of Republic Avenue to mark where all the shell casings landed.

Another Friday afternoon homicide, I thought to myself.

At 1:52 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 20, a 38-year-old man was killed on the sidewalk and the 36-year-old woman who was with him was shot in the stomach, in the 800 block of Sherwood Place, a half-block from St. Ray's cathedral.

Indeed, the city's police chief can put his own spin on Joliet's violent crime statistics at city council meetings, but that does not mean we have to take him at his word.

We know what's going on. We know that parts of the city that once seemed immune and off-limits to shootings are becoming more vulnerable to gun violence.

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