Editorial: Police step up the pressure
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, August 23, 2017
- Salisbury Police Chief Jerry Stokes announces that Jalen Cook and Zakelo Duren were wanted in connection with a double murder that occurred on West Fisher Street in July. The two were arrested later that day.
The Salisbury Police Department seems to have turned a corner when it comes to murder investigations. After accumulating well over a dozen unsolved homicides in recent years, the department has made key arrests in murder investigations in 2017.
Of the 10 homicides that took place in Salisbury in 2016, authorities made arrests in only three by the end of the year.
The city has seen eight homicides so far this year and has made arrests in all of them.
This is far from mission accomplished. The community desperately wants the homicides and shootings to stop. Salisbury has witnessed too much senseless violence. Solving the murders we’ve had and getting killers behind bars is a critical step toward turning things around. On that front, the city appears to be making dramatic progress.
What has changed? The department got a new chief when Jerry Stokes took the oath of office in July 2016. A new deputy chief, Shon Barnes, came on board in May. Stokes and Barnes are in the process of rebuilding and training the department.
Also, close working relationships with the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office and the State Bureau of Investigation have proved invaluable to the city. Other municipal police forces also help when the investigative trail leads to their territory.
Today’s Salisbury Police Department doesn’t mind asking for help with murder investigations. Perhaps that’s a byproduct of being undermanned; gaps are readily acknowledged. Getting help is a necessity. The city and county are in the fight against crime together.
It will be a long fight — a long, uphill climb. High poverty and unemployment set the stage for crime. Smart police work is pivotal, but that is just part of the solution.
Any discussion of local crime has to mention 7-year-old A’yanna Allen’s murder in December. Staying with her grandmother, the little girl was killed as bullets exploded through the wall and window of the room where she slept. The drive-by attack was one of the most cowardly and confounding homicides of 2016. Seeing someone charged in that murder is imperative.
