NJ county’s violent crime initiative focuses on the most dangerous

👮‍♂️ ACPO's Violent Crime Initiative focuses on the county's most dangerous

👮‍♂️ It is the only VCI in the state that focuses on both adults and juveniles

👮‍♂️ The Atlantic County Prosecutor says the VCI has been very successful

In June 2023, The Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, along with a collaboration of multiple local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies launched the county’s Violent Crime Initiative (VCI), which identifies the most violent offenders in the county.

What is the VCI?

The VCI is modeled after other counties that have a similar program in place that is shared by U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger’s Office, said Atlantic County Prosecutor, William Reynolds. There are VCI programs in Camden, Trenton, Jersey City, and Newark, but Reynolds said his team tailored it specifically for Atlantic City because A-C is a very unique place.

He said Sellinger’s office does not interact with Atlantic City because his office deals only with federal cases. A lot of the violent crimes in A-C are all state-level adult and state-level juvenile cases.

The VCI panel is an intelligence-based sharing collaboration where they identify who they believe to be the most violent offenders in Atlantic County and in surrounding counties like Ocean and Cumberland.

“We are the first VCI to actually include juveniles because that is where the violent crime is going to because the adults are using the juveniles as instrumentalities of the crime because the juveniles face much lesser sentences than the adults do,” Reynolds said.

They build it on that premise and it utilizes video cameras, social media, cell phones, and every single tool at their disposal. They’ve partnered with the Department of Homeland Security on the technology side, Reynolds added.

How does it work?

Through the strategic sharing of law enforcement intelligence and the efficient use of combined resources, Reynolds said that book of intelligence is then shared in detention hearings with the superior court judge who is determining detention. This keeps the offender detained.

“So, now they are incarcerated whether it’s in a juvenile facility or the county jail, and they’re not out there committing future crimes or being the victims of future crimes,” Reynolds said.

Ultimately, when a violent offender is taken off the street, it not only decreases and makes it unlikely he or she will re-commit, but that they won’t be a victim of someone retaliating against them.

“It’s really two-fold. One is to charge and detain. The other is to protect them from retaliation and then, obviously the future commission of a crime against them,” he explained.

To date, the initiative is focused on investigations into 20 violent offenders who are actively engaged in violent criminal activity.

The success has been through the roof, Reynolds said. The county has identified about a dozen violent offenders, and out of the dozen charged, about eight have already been detained, including five adults and three juveniles.

At a meeting with the U.S. Attorney’s Office with the 21 New Jersey county prosecutors, as well as State Police and other law enforcement stakeholders. Reynolds said a major from the State Police did a one-page PowerPoint which stated that the likelihood of a person committing a crime or being a victim of a crime, decreases about 70 to 80 percent if they are detained even for just a short period of time after they commit a crime, Reynolds said.

In Laymen’s Terms

Let’s say someone gets picked up for committing a crime and is detained for several days. Even if they get released within those three days of the detention hearing, the likelihood of them re-committing or becoming a victim goes down by 70 to 80 percent, Reynolds explained.

So, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, with the help of the intelligence, guns, gangs, and narcotics units, has built these books of intelligence on each of the violent offenders.
“So, when they are ever charged or picked up, we make the motion to the court to detain that most dangerous individual, and we’ve been super successful. Our detention rate is almost 50 percent, it’s like 48.7 percent since my administration has taken over in June of 2022. The state average is about 18 percent,” Reynolds said.

Those books of intelligence give the county the ability to convince the judges to detain those most serious violent offenders, and that in turn, has decreased violent crime in Atlantic County, he said.

Atlantic County VCI’s Partner Agencies:

Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office
Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office
Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office
Atlantic County Justice Facility
Atlantic City Police Department
Egg Harbor Township Police Department
Township of Hamilton Police Department
Pleasantville Police Department
New Jersey State Police – Real Time Crime Center South
New Jersey State Police – Crimes Suppression South
Drug Enforcement Agency – High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force
Federal Bureau of Investigations
Homeland Security
Office of the United States Attorney

Report a correction 👈 | 👉 Contact our newsroom