'Everybody Always Asks The Question Is Crime Up In Joliet?'

JOLIET, IL — Violent crime across the city of Joliet dropped slightly last year and the Joliet Police Department investigated a grand total of seven homicides, which is up by two from the 2021, but nowhere near the homicide totals from the previous two years, Joliet Police Chief Bill Evans told City Council members at Tuesday night's meeting.

"Crime is up in some areas, slightly, and it's down in some areas, slightly," Evans told the City Council.

In 2020, Joliet had 15 homicides and in 2019, Joliet had 19 homicides.

"All in all, violent crimes in the city of Joliet are actually down 2 percent," Evans said. "We went from about 706 violent crimes last year in 2021 and 692 in the 2022 year."

Overall, Joliet has a population of 151,000 people, and the city's daytime weekday population is "enormous" with so many more people driving to and from Joliet for work, Evans pointed out.

Evans also noted that criminal sexual assaults and robberies are both down in Joliet.

"Burglaries was slightly up, but not by much," Evans said. "Motor vehicle theft is fortunately down about 13 percent. We have a decrease in criminal sexual assaults, we have a decrease in robberies. We also had a decrease in aggravated assaults."

Crimes involving bank fraud, on the other hand, are up substantially, Evans said.

Joliet police are seeing a great number of older residents falling victims to bank transaction crimes as a result of mailing checks of large amounts of money.

These checks are intercepted at the post office, washed and cashed by the identity thief, often, for even larger amounts of money, he said.

"That's something we saw a pretty drastic increase in," Evans remarked.

Evans previously worked as a lieutenant and investigated a ton of gang crimes when he worked for the Cook County Sheriff's Office in Chicago. He became Joliet's first outside chief since the 1990s. On March 1, 2022 he replaced Dawn Malec, who previously replaced Al Roechner.

After getting rid of Malec, Joliet City Manager Jim Capparelli remarked that Joliet was done hiring its police chiefs from inside the ranks.

On Tuesday, Evans told the City Council he strongly advocates "proactive policing" and he believes that philosophy helped the Joliet Police Department recover a total of 263 "guns off the street" in 2022.

He also said the Joliet Police Department hired a total of 40 new police officers during 2022.

Of the city's seven homicides, Joliet police had a clearance rate of 57 percent, making arrests in four of the seven. Evans believes last year's clearance rate can still climb higher because there's a good chance arrests will still be made in some of the unsolved murders from 2022, he told the City Council.

One of last year's homicides Joliet police continue to investigate happened on Oct. 30 along Henderson Avenue. During broad daylight on a Sunday, someone fatally shot 27-year-old Jeffery Faint Jr., as he was driving his sport utility vehicle on the city's east side, near Columbia Street and Henderson Avenue. Officers found Faint's sport utility vehicle on the southeast corner of the intersection appeared to have been involved in a crash, coming to rest on its passenger side.

Faint had been paroled from the Illinois Department of Corrections in March after serving a prison term for two felony gun charges.

In 2022, two of Joliet's seven homicides did not involve guns, knives or strangulation. Instead, automobiles were the murder weapon.

More and more people around Joliet are using their vehicles as weapons to harm someone. This past weekend, Joliet police arrested a 24-year-old woman who officers say tried to run over a 28-year-old man who was the subject of an order of protection. In that case, the man suffered a leg injury. The woman, Donna Zavala, is now in jail facing a $20,0o0 bail.