The 2015 clearance rate for the Shooting Response Team is a slight increase over the 40 percent in the second half of 2014.
TRENTON -- The city's joint Shooting Response Team investigated 103 cases last year involving 116 gunshot victims and cleared 42 percent of the cases with criminal charges, the team's leader said.
The 2015 clearance rate for the team, which specifically investigates nonfatal shootings, is a slight increase over the 40 percent of case cleared in the second half of 2014.
Although it's a small increase, it's important, team leader Sgt. Carmelo Rodriguez said, because 2015 was the first full year of data since the team was reactivated half way through 2014.
In the first six months of 2014, when shootings were handled by the detective bureau, the clearance rate was about 15 percent, Rodriguez said, using estimate numbers.
After retired detective and captain Ernest Parrey Jr. returned to the department in mid 2014 as part of Mayor Eric Jackson's cabinet, he re-activated the shooting team.
Initially, the team likely got a dose of luck, because Rodriguez said the team started solving shootings right away in the latter part of 2014.
"We started to see a decrease in shooting incidents, and once we got rolling, the number of incidents really started declining," he said.
And the clearance rate rose.
During 2015, the team of six detectives was able to keep pace, edging the rate up to 42 percent.
The team dates to 2007 and at the time was a piece of Operation CeaseFire, a state program that pooled local, county and state resources to battle gun violence, from investigating to prosecuting gun crimes.
The team was, and still is, made up of officers from all over Mercer County and the state police and work out of Trenton police headquarters.
In 2011, though, with new Trenton police leadership and the eventual laying off of 105 Trenton police officers, the team dwindled and disappeared.
Parrey said bringing it back under his watch was an easy decision.
"From work they had done did in the past, it was a no-brainer to put it back together, " Parrey said.
And bringing in surrounding agencies gives officers from other towns a chance to see a different policing perspective, and it gives Trenton police always-needed extra cops on the street, the director said.
Detectives from Trenton, Lawrence, the Mercer County sheriff and prosecutor's offices and the New Jersey State Police currently comprise the team.
Rodriguez said the team is working the same way they did in the late 2000s, minus a few small changes, and they still investigate mainly when someone is wounded by gunfire.
Rodriguez said the team does not disregard the 'no hit' shootings, as they are called, and often assists Trenton police's robbery/assault unit, which investigates them.
For example, during a recent robbery, shots were fired, but nobody was injured. But not long after, the two robbers started fighting and one shot the other, and the team worked both cases.
"That's the kind of thing where we would get involved," Rodriguez said.
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Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.