As 2017 violent crime rate falls, Rockford teens lack conflict resolution skills, remain at risk

ROCKFORD — Nekita Hill didn't know there would be gangsters, alcohol and firearms at a Green Dale Drive house party she'd heard her son was set to attend on July 30, 2016.

An instinct told her not to allow her 6-foot 2-inch son Greg — an East High School sophomore who dreamed of playing in the NBA — to attend. Hill, 39, warned her son in a text message about 9 p.m. not to go. She threatened punishment if she learned the teenager went against her wishes.

Bullets flew when an argument broke out at the party. Greg was shot and killed, two other teens wounded. And a Rockford mother was left to grieve, laying her son to rest but unable to afford a headstone to mark his grave. No arrests have been made.

"Something needs to be done in this community," Hill said in a phone interview. "The community needs to trust law enforcement more and should form a bond, a partnership, because we all have the same goals. I feel if the community worked more with the police, we could combat the violence that's going on. I feel we could get these creeps off the streets."

Authorities are still actively investigating Greg Hill's slaying. His mother still hopes someone will come forward with information that brings his killers to justice.

An Associated Press and USA TODAY Network analysis of Gun Violence Archive data — gathered from media reports and police press releases, and covering a 3½-year period through June of this year — found that of the 10 cities with the highest rates of shootings of children ages 12 to 17, most had, like Rockford, populations of less than 250,000 people.

Rockford was not among the 10 cities with the highest rates of teen shootings, but the city struggles with high rates of violent crime and with teen violence.

Greg was one of seven 12-to-17-year-old residents lost to gun violence during a spike in violent crime across Rockford in 2016.

There were four additional younger victims of homicide last year in Rockford and, in all, there were 27 killings in the city last year. That was the most killings in Rockford since 1996, when there were 31, and the third most behind 1994.

That near-record-setting pace of 2016 has slowed in 2017. Violent crime halfway through 2017 is down 6 percent from 1,551 violent crimes through July 2016 to 1,452 through July of this year.

So far in 2017, two people ages 12 to 17 have been killed in Rockford. A total of 12 people have been killed in suspected homicides this year.

A 2015 Department of Justice analysis found that both victims and those arrested for gun violence in Rockford tended to be male (62 percent of victims, 90 percent of arrests), minority (62 percent of victims and arrests) and often younger than 18 (39 percent of victims, 40 percent of arrests).

Police Lt. Kurt Whisenand, who leads the city detective bureau, said Rockford is taking a multifaceted approach to combating the violence.

Rockford police have expanded community policing efforts with more public engagement, new police stations and a resident officer program, among other steps. Rockford investigators are focusing on the few suspects who cause the most chaos and crime as part of a "focused deterrence" program.

And Chief Dan O'Shea, who was hired in April 2016, reorganized the detective bureau to allow investigators to place more focus on violent crimes and crimes that tend to lead to violence, Whisenand said.

Unfortunately, too many teenagers don't know how to deal with conflict peacefully, and "their first effort of any kind of conflict resolution goes from zero to violence," Whisenand said.

"By the time a teenager picks up a gun to commit a violent offense, we have already failed him as a society and community," Whisenand said. "It’s too late to try to intervene then. So a lot of our focus is on eliminating and decreasing domestic violence, decreasing child abuse — whether it be physical or emotional or sexual abuse of children. We are really focusing investigations on that type of stuff because the overwhelming majority of teenager violent offenders were victimized as children."

Jeff Kolkey: 815-987-1374; jkolkey@rrstar.com; @jeffkolkey