Is crime making Pottstown unsafe?
Looking back 10 years: Numbers show some things change, some stay same
By Evan Brandt
POTTSTOWN >> Crime is not up in Pottstown, at least not according to the numbers.
Crime in the borough last year was, in nearly all categories, below the borough’s 10-year average, according to a Mercury analysis of crime statistics provided by the Pottstown Police Department.
The numbers of serious crimes like murder, rape and arson have remained relatively flat since 2005, and in addition, the statistics show that 2014 saw 13 percent fewer major crimes and a decrease of more than 16 percent in all reportable crimes.
Pottstown has not had more than two murders per year since 2007.
Last year, the only crimes substantially higher than the 10-year-average were fraud, drug violations, offenses against family and drunkenness.
“There have been some substantial changes since I started,” said Pottstown Police Capt. Robert Thomas, who started with the department in 1990.
“When I started, no one would go into what was then Penn Village, now Bright Hope, without back-up because they would get jumped,” said Thomas. “I know because I got jumped myself.”
“That’s not true anymore. A lot has changed for the better since then, considering,” he said.
So that’s the good news.
The bad news is crime is still very much a reality in Pottstown — and very much on people’s minds.
“The numbers say one thing, but that’s not how it feels,” said Thomas.
“We’re stemming the tide, but we’re not changing things on a fundamental level.”
In the past year alone, a number of violent crimes have occurred in Pottstown:
• On May 29, 2014, one person was shot in the 200 block of Jefferson Avenue near Liberty Alley around 12:30 a.m. It was near the location of the March 22, 2013, gunshot slaying of Victor Baez outside Brian’s Cafe in the 300 block of Jefferson Avenue.
• The May 29 shooting was followed the same week by reports of shots fired at a car wash at Wilson and Spruce streets; a man shot in the elbow on Lincoln Avenue; and the attempted robbery of the Wells Fargo Bank on East High Street.
• Then, on June 5, 2014, Steven Mitchell was found dead in his car in the 400 block of Jefferson Avenue. John Anthony Parson Jr., 18, of Pottstown, and Tyron Joab Witherspoon, 22, of Philadelphia, were charged with murder, robbery and conspiracy.
• On Nov. 6, 2014, a man was shot at on North Evans Street after being accosted by four males who were allegedly looking for marijuana. On Nov. 13, police and a C-MERT team arrested Skyler Vollmuth and charged him with assault.
• A Nov. 8, 2014 shoot-out in the 400 block of King Street saw at least six shots fired. One resident described it as being “like the wild west.” Vollmuth is also a suspect in that shooting, according to police.
• Three days after Thanksgiving — from Nov. 30 into Dec. 1 — the borough saw a 12-hour period of violence with three shooting incidents, two of which resulted in victims in Rowan and Lesher alleys; one armed robbery on King Street, followed by the year’s second murder, this a shotgun slaying of Lori Sheridan inside a home at King and Washington streets which police believe was drug-related.
Derrick Jackson, Andre Jackson and Jourdan Harper were charged with the robberies and murder.
• The grim holiday season continued when, at 11:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, a man was shot in the leg while driving in the 300 block of Walnut Street.
• Two days later, shots rang out again, this time in Fry’s Alley, behind Jefferson Avenue, in the block between Franklin and Evans streets, where a car was found riddled with bullet holes.
• And on Feb. 11, shots rang out again, this time in Lesher Alley, between Charlotte and Evans streets, sending one man to the hospital. Police have not released the name of the victim in that shooting.
The violence has sparked prayers , protests, marches and, more recently, a meeting with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office.
Kevin Steele, First Assistant District Attorney for the county, told those at the Feb. 16 citizens meeting that “there is concern about violence in Pottstown.”
The county’s Violent Crime Task Force is now taking an active interest in Pottstown and is participating in several investigations involving shootings.
“Considering the violence that’s going on here now, you have our attention,” Assistant District Attorney Jason Whalley told the group.
While shootings tend to grab the headlines, other types of crimes remain high.
Larcenies continue to be the most frequent crime in Pottstown.
The rate of 768 larcenies per 100,000 residents was more than twice the Pennsylvania rate in 2012, the last year for which Pennsylvania statistics were available.
Assaults in Pottstown, despite some dips and rises, remain at about the same level as 10 years ago.
And while vehicle thefts show a downward trend, burglaries are higher than 10 years ago, despite a one-year dip.
These figures buck the national trend.
According to FBI statistics, major crime rates across the nation have dropped by double digits in all categories.
The primary reason things seem worse in Pottstown is the drug trade and the guns that inevitably accompany it, says Pottstown Police Chief Richard Drumheller.
“Back in the day, the toughest guy in town was the best fighter,” said Drumheller. “Now it’s the guy who is most willing to pull a trigger.”
But as much as they undermine citizens’ sense of safety, gun crimes don’t show up in their own category in crime statistics, he explained.
“If they’re used in an assault, then the incident is classified as an assault; if a gun is used in a robbery, then it’s classified as a robbery,” Drumheller explained.
“And if we get a call of shots fired, and we can’t find any evidence, it doesn’t even get logged,” he said.
Although the borough does not keep separate statistics for gun crimes in the Unified Crime Report information it submits to the FBI, the FBI does keep those statistics on a statewide basis.
According to the numbers for 2013, at 440, Pennsylvania tied with Michigan for having the third most murders committed with firearms in the United States.
The same year, Pennsylvania logged 22,227 aggravated assaults with guns, ranking it tenth in the nation and, at 14,019, sixth in the nation for robberies in which guns were used.
But whether they show up in crime statistics or not, police recognize the impact gun violence is having on the community they police.
“It’s so bad now that when the Eagles lodge was going to have a 21-gun salute to honor a veteran a while back, we walked the neighborhood along Queen Street to let everyone know they would be hearing gunfire,” said Drumheller.
Gun violence was seen as so pervasive last spring that Kenya Lynn Edwards and several other neighbors decided they needed to do something, so they organized a series of weekly marches against violence.
“People need to feel safe when they walk to the Rite-Aid, when they walk to the Redner’s. Things have to change,” Edwards told The Mercury in June.
For Tiffany Cuascut, 16, things have changed — for the worse – and just in the past few years.
She said she and her friends don’t go out at night any more.
“We have to get driven everywhere we need to go,” Cuascut said. “It was different when I was younger, I felt more safe.”
And in addition to how gunfire erodes the sense of safety in a community, it erodes the sense of safety for police officers as well.
It has changed how they do their jobs.
“Now officers have to be trained to assume everyone has a gun,” Drumheller said.
“That means if I pull over a car driven by mom and pop, we have to treat them like they have a gun and that won’t be a good experience for anyone,” he said.
But if things continue the way they are, living in Pottstown won’t remain a good experience for the law-abiding citizens who are trying to build a life here, Pottstown Councilwoman Sheryl Miller said at the Feb. 16 crime meeting.
“We need relief now,” she said.
“Every day,” Rosedale resident Cindy Conard told Whalley and Steele, “you read in the paper people say if they could sell their house they’d move out of Pottstown right now. We can’t be OK with that.”
