Evanston’s Top Cop Claims Crime Dropped 9 Percent in 2013

The Evanston Police Department reports that crime was down 9 percent in 2013 over last year.

Crimes statistics are based on eight crime areas or index crimes collected by the FBI for the annual Uniform Crime Report. The data collected measures crime rates and fluctuations reported to law enforcement.

Law enforcement agencies representing 95 percent of the U.S. population submit local data voluntarily to the FBI. Total data is used to compare national crime rates.

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The crime index includes the categories of homicide, criminal sexual assault, robbery, burglary, aggravated battery and assault, theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.

Evanston reported 1,972 crimes in 2013, a 7.4-percent drop over the 2,130 crimes that were reported during the same time period in 2012.

The following local crime statistics measure the period between January and November 2013 available on the police department’s website.

• Three homicides were reported in 2013, compared to two from the same period the year before.

• Criminal sexual assaults rose to nine in 2013, compared to five reported in 2012.

What the statistics don’t show is the human toll such crimes take on crime victims and their families.

Azim and Mobeen Hakeem were both found shot to death in the basement of their Evanston tobacco store in July 2013.

The two brothers took over running the family-owned Evanston Pipe and Tobacco Store at 923 Davis St. after their father needed a wheelchair. Both were remembered by family members as “gentle humble men.”

Their IDs and a small .22 caliber handgun which may have been the weapon used in the brothers’ double murder, were found in the home of suspected bank robber Kevin Ross.

Ross, 29, was shot to death by police when he tried to get away after robbing Chase Bank branch in downtown Evanston in December, police said.

The year’s third homicide, 30-year-old Floyd Gilbert, was shot to death last December on Darrow Street. A suspect is in custody.

Commander Jay Parrott of the Evanston Police Department attributed 2013’s crime drop in a police newsletter to “strategic policing, better information to the public on crime and crime prevention, and community policing efforts.”

Evanston Police Chief Richard Eddington summed it up this way: “Getting cops on the dots has an impact on the quality of life in Evanston.”